


Six feet under

by madgetval



Series: NWIT - Hermitcraft [2]
Category: Hermitcraft RPF, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Angstier, Demise-centric, Gen, Hermitcraft season 6, I have a policy of no spoilers in the tags, Sequel to Not what it seems, Slightly Out Of Character, The characters are the characters . . . or are they?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:41:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 33,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24820243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madgetval/pseuds/madgetval
Summary: A game of life and death. The presence of an unknown enemy. Someone out to get them.Things aren't looking too good for the hermits, are they?The newest chapter is an update.
Series: NWIT - Hermitcraft [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2021585
Comments: 19
Kudos: 47





	1. And so it begins!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go!

Scar was sitting on his bed, absentmindedly patting Jellie as he chatted with Cub on his communicator. He had been staying at Falsewell ever since the fight in Area 77 a few days ago (in Room 6 of the motel, to be exact). Stress had been checking his health status regularly.

He was sure that he was fine, but Stress had ordered him to stay inside the room until he was fully healed up - or else. He did think that he was fully healed up, but apparently not in a professional healer’s eyes.

<cubfan135> wait gtg. concorp awaits

<GoodTimeWithScar> really? see you

There was no reply. Sighing, he turned off his communicator and eased Jellie off his lap. He stretched, and decided that he wanted to go outside for a bit of fresh air. He could face Stress’s wrath later.

He grabbed his coat from where it hung from a hook, and was  _ about _ to go outside when he heard intense yelling coming from what sounded like the carpark outside.

“You said that Cleo was open for armor stand commissions!” a voice that sounded like False shouted angrily.

A voice that sounded like Impulse laughed. “Why would you believe me? You know that I would never help you.”

Scar peeked through the holes in the iron door. Sure enough, Impulse and False were standing in the carpark, near the truck parked in the middle, and arguing heatedly. Well, False was arguing. Impulse was trying to stifle his laughter.

Scar decided that it would not be a good idea to go outside right now, so he turned away from the door, just as Impulse let out a yelp. He snapped back to attention and went back to watching through the window.

“Don’t grab my hair, you savage!” Impulse cried. He was gingerly holding his head and False was now the one standing back with a satisfied smile.

“Serves you right,” she scoffed.

Impulse let go of his head and reached for his sword.

“Oh, you wanna go?” False challenged, drawing out her sword too.

Impulse was silent as he drew out his blade with a satisfying  _ clang _ . “Don’t get too cocky.”

False laughed. “Don’t worry, I won’t.”

Their blades met, and they began fighting.

Scar ducked away from the door as if he was afraid they were going to come after him. He didn’t want to get involved in their fight, but there was no way he could go outside when a full-on PvP battle was going on.

He hung his coat back up and was about to resume doing nothing when there was a knock on his door. He saw that it was Iskall.

_ Of course it’s Iskall. Only Iskall would have such a blatant disregard for the rule of not being within a hundred blocks of False when she’s fighting. _

_ Of course, he’s a formidable opponent himself. He’s killed False a few times as well. He doesn’t have to fear her. Unlike everyone else. _

Scar opened the door. Iskall entered politely.

“Hey Scar, how’re you doing?” he asked. Scar beckoned him to sit down on a stool. Jellie purred and stalked over to sit on Iskall’s lap.

“Oh, I’m fine. Could you please tell Stress that I’m fine?”

“Sure,” Iskall agreed. He looked in the general direction of Impulse and False, even though there was a wall between them. “Those two are at it again, huh?”

“Yup,” Scar sighed. “So now I’m stuck in here.”

“You know, I could kill both of them for you,” Iskall offered.

“No way!” Scar said. “I do not want to incur the wrath of False - she’s my host. Also, you might not win against both of them.”

“If you insist,” Iskall sighed.

They lapsed into silence, before Iskall piped up again. “Do you want to see my Impulse and False shipping fanfiction?”

Scar inhaled rapidly and choked on his own spit. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Oh come  _ on _ , don’t tell me you haven’t thought about them secretly being a couple. They argue like they've been married for a long time,” Iskall laughed.

“No, I literally haven’t, and even if I did, I wouldn’t write literal fanfiction - False would be after me,” Scar answered.

“Still. You wanna read it?” Iskall asked.

“Not at all,” Scar replied. “Also, does it even count as fanfiction if you’re not fans of them?”

Iskall opened his mouth, but no words came out. Instead, he just shrugged.

“Fair enough,” Scar sighed. “Why else are you here?”

“Why do I have to have an agenda to visit my good old friend Scar?” Iskall asked.

Scar rolled his eyes. “Fine.”

“You want to head outside? I’ll protect you,” his companion offered.

He sighed. “Sure, why not.”

They exited to room, with Iskall taking out a shield to deflect any arrows, and holding his sword in his other hand. They sneaked along the balcony as Iskall pointed in the direction of the diner. They had almost made it off of the balcony until -

“Iskall!” False bellowed. Scar turned around to see her deflecting an arrow from Impulse with a sword. She quickly took out her bow and aimed at Scar’s companion, barely missing his forehead.

“What do you want?” Iskall whined as he dived for the door of the diner, leaving Scar utterly helpless in the middle of the road.

Scar watched as False took out a Strength II potion and drank it in one gulp, smashing the bottle onto the floor. Her eyes started glowing dark pink, almost fuchsia. “Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about, Iskall85!”

Iskall let out a small squeal as she lunged for him. “What? Hey, I didn’t do anything!”

“Oh yeah? Then what was that book . . . fanfiction . . . that I found in a shulker box of crap in the diner the other day?” she snarled as she swiped at him with her sword.

Scar cringed heavily. It was just so in-character of Iskall to leave such a dangerous item in a shulker box that anyone could come and see the contents of.

“Hey Scar, I’m just going to head over this way,” Iskall said as he ran down the road and gestured to the main road that led to Area 77, ducking to miss an arrow.

“Not so fast!” False warned as she smacked Iskall over the head with her sword. Scar watched as Iskall staggered around dizzily before quickly recovering and making a beeline down the road.

He continued watching as False began chasing after him, and as an arrow whizzed from behind him and struck False in the leg.

He froze and turned to see Impulse holding a bow. He turned back to see False, now in flames, hiss like an angry cat, pat out the flames on her coat, and raise her middle finger at Impulse. Before he could react, she had bolted down the street after Iskall, arrow still in leg, an astonishing feat to attempt due to Iskall’s amazing speed when scared.

He turned back to Impulse, who shrugged and took to the air, leaving Scar alone in the middle of the road. He sighed as he turned back to go to his room.

_ Argh, why can’t my friends just be  _ normal  _ for once? Not fight each other and just have a good time? A good time with Scar _ , he added, smiling at his own joke.

He turned to go up to the balcony. He looked up to see none other than Doc, sitting on the stairs outside Room 5, reading a book.

Doc turned and looked up. He waved awkwardly. “Hi.”

The cyborg turned back to his book after scrutinizing him heavily. “Hello.”

They stood awkwardly for a moment before Scar made for his own door. As he opened the door, Doc cleared his throat.

“Have you read this book? It’s very good,” he said.

“Really?” Scar asked curiously. “What’s it called?”

“Imfalse, by Iskall85,” Doc replied.

Scar choked on his spit again. Doc watched him calmly as he coughed. “Oh, wow. Such an … inspiring book.”

“Indeed,” Doc agreed. “It inspires chaos among friends, for it was I who informed False of the existence of this book.”

“Oh, uhh …,” Scar trailed off.

“But it is quite well-written, for something  _ Iskall _ wrote,” Doc added. Scar nodded agreeably. Doc didn’t say anything else, so Scar went back into his room and fell face-first onto his bed.

Doc sighed as he stood up and took a swig from his water bottle. It wasn’t that he felt responsible for all of the pain that Scar had endured at Area 77, exactly. But he still didn’t feel  _ right _ . He knew that it wasn’t him, it was whoever had been controlling him, but he knew that to Scar, it had been him all along.

_ I don’t have to apologize if I don’t want to. Besides, if I did, that would be totally out of character and might cause them to worry more. _

_ They already have to worry about the existence of someone else in the world who possibly hates us and is definitely trying to ruin our lives. Yeah, nah, I think I’ll keep my apologies close to my chest. _

_ But  _ still, the sensible part of his brain argued.  _ Do it for Scar. He’s your friend. _

_ He certainly doesn’t think of me as a friend now. Didn’t you see how he reacted to my attempt at small talk? He was obviously uncomfortable. _

_ But that was because you were talking about the book that had just caused a fight that he had witnessed. He’s not meant to feel comfortable about those things. _

_ Argh! _ all of his mind screamed. It was almost comforting when his internal debate was interrupted by his communicator beeping.

<Xisuma> Hey guys, we are having a group meeting over at Falsewell since Scar is still resting.

<Xisuma> Please come.

<Grian> bro whyyyyy

<Keralis1> come on, don’t argue with the boss

<Grian> whatever, i’m not coming

<iskall85> i’m tyyring to type but i;m’c urrenly ont he run from false who’se trying to MURDER ME!

<Xisuma> Okay, please come. Meet by the diner?

<ZombieCleo> yeah, whatevs

Doc chuckled slightly at the dialogue. Although he didn’t really enjoy large gatherings of more than one person, he did suppose that this might - just might - help him take his mind off things.

Which was also lucky, since the diner was around twenty blocks away from him - very, very close. He turned off his communicator and stood up.

Scar was  _ trying _ to ignore the beeping of his communicator, but it was getting on his nerves. And to turn his notifications off, he had to turn  _ on _ his communicator, thus reading all of the messages and not getting a goddamn break.

_ Well, I’ve gotta do what I’ve gotta do _ , he thought as he took his communicator out of his pocket. He had around fifty messages from the other hermits. It seemed like Iskall and False were now fighting via communicator. He scrolled up to see that X had called a meeting in the diner in Falsewell.

He really didn’t want to go, but he had a duty, didn’t he? As a hermit, X trusted him and he had a duty to show up to meetings. He put his communicator away and walked outside.

Hermits were gradually gathering. He could see Tango, an angry False, a jumpy Iskall and a serious Xisuma. Soon, Keralis and Bdubs had arrived from New New Hermitville and Ren had arrived from Speedy Pines.

Scar took a seat on the railing outside the diner as more hermits arrived. Iskall came to sit next to him, and False sat menacingly on his other side. He froze up, worried that the two would start fighting through him.

After a few minutes of tension, all twenty-one of the hermits had arrived and Scar was still in one piece. X climbed up onto a pillar and began talking.

“Thanks for coming, guys,” he began. “I thought you weren’t coming, Grian?”

“What? When did I say that?” Scar heard Grian ask.

X shook his head. “Whatever. So, you  _ may _ have heard about an event a few days ago, that Doc was -”

“Mind controlled, yeah, we know,” Cleo interrupted. “Anything else you wanted to say?”

“Actually, yes,” X replied. “Ever since the fight, Doc has been having some therapy sessions with Ren. Would you like to share, Doc?”

“No,” Doc muttered, then saw Ren’s death stare from the other side of the crowd. “Fine, fine! I’ve been having therapy sessions with Ren. I’ve found out that I now have a fear of golden carrots but I don’t really feel guilty for ‘my’ actions. Good enough?”

“ _ Actually _ ,” Ren cut in, “he’s recovering from his injuries well, and he doesn’t seem to be that affected by the mind control. He says that when he was mind controlled, from what he can remember, that he was unable to fight the mind controller, although he says that when he was mind controlled he felt like he was doing the right thing.  _ Also _ , he doesn’t remember what he was trying to do. So …”

“What you’re saying is that there’s absolutely nothing we can do to find out the cause of the mind control,” Cub stated.

“Pretty much, yeah,” Ren replied.

“You’re saying that there might be someone who’s deliberately antagonizing us and trying to make our lives miserable,” Zedaph said.

“Yup,” Ren answered. “Also, I have a theory that they’re trying to take over the world and kill us or drive us out.”

“WHAT?” many hermits shouted simultaneously.

“Calm down,” a voice said, but it wasn’t Ren, but what seemed like … Grian? “You can’t possibly believe him. That’s all a load of crap. We all know that we’re the only beings apart from mobs in this world.”

“Yeah, exactly,” Cleo added. “How can you expect us to believe your lies?”

“Oh, maybe it’s because  _ they’re not lies _ and that it is in your best interests to believe us,” Ren snapped. “You’ll be sorry once these people start actively trying to destroy us.”

“But they  _ won’t _ , because they  _ don’t exist _ !” Grian shouted. He stepped back, seething. “We know that we’re the only ones in this world. There’s no way there are others here.”

“How do you think Doc was mind-controlled then?” Ren asked.

“I  _ don’t _ ,” Grian snapped. “We know that he’s an asshole. This is just another ploy of his to get us to sympathize with him.”

“I’m not -” Doc started.

“What?” Grian asked, exasperated. “An asshole? You can’t possibly expect us to actually believe that.”

“That’s enough,” X called. “Stop arguing!”

Grian, Ren and Doc froze. X sighed.

“Don’t you see how your words are hurting Doc?” he asked. “Cleo, you weren’t at the fight, but Grian - you were at the fight, and you saw how much Doc hurt Scar over the course of Area 77. You should be able to see that Doc wouldn’t do that normally.”

“No, I shouldn’t,” Grian hissed, crossing his arms. X took a deep breath.

“Can we please cooperate?” he asked politely. Grian shook his head.

“You can’t possibly expect us to cooperate while there’s an insane person  _ right there _ , in public, and you’re not doing anything about him!”

“I’m not insane,” Doc interrupted.

Grian snorted. “Yeah, right.”

“Right, that’s enough,” Cub interjected. Everyone turned to look at the scientist. “This meeting is over. Grian, if you’d like to argue with Doc, do it in your own time.”

Scar heard him mutter under his breath, “what a waste of time that was.”

The hermits stood in tense silence, but gradually began to disperse. Grian shot a glare at Doc and he and Mumbo walked off. Iskall and False were now yelling at each other. Scar slowly stood up and began edging towards Room 6 again, before he saw Cleo approaching Doc.

Doc froze as he raised a cup of coffee he had  stolen bought from the diner to his lips. Cleo was making her way towards him. Did she want his coffee? But he had worked so hard to get it away from False!

_ God, I’m so stupid. She was the other one apart from Grian who didn’t believe me - or spoke up about her disbelief. _

“Uh, hey, Cleo,” he tried. Cleo rolled her eyes as she stood in front of him.

“I just wanted to let you know that I don’t exactly believe in what you said but I don’t agree with Grian. If you’re lying, then I believe that you’re not lying to be an asshole,” she said.

“Am I supposed to take that as a compliment?” he asked incredulously.

“Not at all,” she snapped. Doc watched as she put on her elytra and flew away, spamming rockets right in his face.

He rolled his eyes and resumed drinking his hard-earned coffee. Cleo was cold and arrogant, sure, but at least she wasn’t his enemy - the last time they had fought, a civil war ensued, and Doc didn’t really feel like doing one of those again.

After he had finished his coffee, he tossed it into the bin, only to find that False was watching him with suspicion. He smiled awkwardly at her, and she strode over into the diner. He watched through the glass as she opened the payment chest to find no diamonds. Her head snapped back, but Doc had already bolted away to his room.

Scar watched with amusement as False ran over to Room 5 and began pounding on the door. He had seen Doc steal the coffee from the diner, and now he was paying for stealing from False.

“FBI, open up!” False barked.

“I’m just a lowly guest in your motel! What did I do to deserve this?” Scar heard Doc wail from inside the room.

“You stole from the Dusty Diner!” she yelled. “If you don’t open your door immediately, I will have no choice but to break it down!”

“It’s not like the door belongs to me,” Doc argued. “The door belongs to you.”

“Whatever!” False shouted. She took out her pickaxe and started taking down the door. Scar sat back down on the fence that he had been sitting on before.

It wasn’t like he blamed Doc, exactly. He knew that Doc would never have done those evil things on his own, and that he had gone through a lot too. But he couldn’t help but feel just the tiniest bit of resentment at Doc’s immediate forgiveness by everybody. It was still the face of Doc that had told him that he would delete himself if he didn’t cooperate. It was still the face of Doc that had fought him and beaten him down.

As Doc made every attempt to keep False out of his room, he saw Scar watching their fight from his perch on the fence outside the diner. The terraformer was watching them with an amused expression on his face, the happiest Doc had seen him since the fight three days ago.

He assumed that he and Scar were on good terms again. He knew that Scar was just a tiny bit uncomfortable around him, maybe, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. There wasn’t much he would do about it. The real problem was Grian. The builder seemed to hate him, which was strange. He was sure that they had had a conversation as soon as he woke up from his unconsciousness and had mended their broken friendship.

Why did he hate Doc? He didn’t remember any asshole action he had done since that conversation, so it was completely not his fault that Grian seemed to hate him.

But still … 

~~~

The builder in question was taking a walk ten thousand blocks west of the main island. He had rockets in his right hand and a shulker box tucked under his left arm. He was searching for a plains biome far enough away from spawn that he could pass by undetected, but everything was just desert, desert, desert.

He took a swig from his water bottle and put it back in his bag. His sneakers were filling up with sand uncomfortably, and he had to stop after every two minutes to empty out his shoes.

He was looking for a large plains biome that he could build in. It was almost Ren’s birthday and he wanted to make something for his ex-hippie brother. He checked his communicator for his location. Yup, he was 11, 378 blocks away from 0,0.

He stopped to empty out his shoes, and as he poured the sand from his left shoe, he saw a flash of green in the distance. Was that a plains biome? He put his shoe back on and ran forward.

Indeed it was. And it was quite big as well. He put down an ender chest and took out many shulker boxes of resources. Time to get to work.

~~~

The Grian in Hermitland, however, was walking around with Mumbo. They were having a delightful discussion about nothing at all as they took a stroll. He was attempting to get close to the moustached redstoner just like the real Grian was, but the man was just - he didn’t know how to describe it, but he was just … a spoon.

_ Hocus pocus, you must focus _ , he thought to himself.  _ Remember what you’re here for. Remember what you’re doing. _

They were walking around the oldest part of Hermitland, the part closest to Area 77. He turned to Mumbo. “So, I’m thinking of making a minigame. It’s called Demise and the last person to not die gets all the entry diamonds.”

“Do you think that that’s really a good idea? I mean, sure, it’s Halloween next month, but this might distract us from our main projects …”

“Oh calm down, Mumbo,” he replied. “Don’t you think that we’re a bit too stressed all the time?”

“But for good reason! There might be someone else trying to sabotage us in the world!” Mumbo protested. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“Don’t worry,” said the Grian. “Everything’s going to be  _ just fine _ .”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FBI stands for Falsewell Bureau of Investigation. Don't question me.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter. I will be updating far less frequently (perhaps every week or so), but after next Friday I will be on winter (here in the southern hemisphere) holidays, and I plan to get lots of writing done!
> 
> This is part 2 of the Not what it seems series (I should call it NWIT, shouldn't I?), so if you're confused about this, go read that first. This will be mainly about Demise and Demise-related activities, which is why I put Major Character Death because you know, e v e r y o n e d i e d except for Iskall.
> 
> Hope you enjoy your read, and see you in like a week for Chapter 2!
> 
> I plan on releasing the fanfiction of Impulse x False that Iskall wrote in this chapter as a side story, so, you know, keep an eye out for that.


	2. And so something ... weird ... happened

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which some slightly suspicious characters enter the story. Nothing special, y'know. Don't you just hate it when your friends who secretly aren't your friends turn into your friends?

Scar watched from his perch as the remaining hermits dispersed. Iskall had left immediately after False had gone after Doc. Now, Jevin and X were talking about who-knows-what as they made for Hermitville. He’d seen Grian and Mumbo leave before. Cub waved at him as he took to the sky, and Scar smiled and waved back.

TFC, who had said nothing for the entirety of the meeting, was also making his way back to the mainland, to work on his underground base, probably. Scar realized that he had either walked/ran all the way through the nether tunnel after making his way up to the tunnel intersection or used a boat, and neither of those possibilities were very pleasant.

He rushed up to the elderly man as he walked to the bridge. TFC turned around.

“Hi, TFC,” he said awkwardly. He didn’t really talk to TFC that often, him being the only one who fit the “hermit” title properly.

“Hi, Scar,” he replied.

“Do you want to stay over here for a while? I don’t think travelling eight thousand blocks just to attend a meeting is worth it …” he trailed off.

“Nah, it’s okay,” TFC replied. “I’ve gotten used to not having an elytra. I’ve been here a few times. I’ve gotten used to it.”

_ Gotten used to it. Gotten used to it. Gotten used to it. _

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked again.

“Yes, I’m sure,” TFC replied, with a hint of annoyance in his voice.

Scar decided that it would be a great time to run away so he nodded profusely and ran away.

~~~

Mumbo was having quite a pleasant day, apart from the argument that Grian and Cleo and Doc had had at the meeting. He didn’t know what his friend was up to or why he was arguing with Doc and making this “Demise” game, but he hoped that he would come to his senses soon.

They had walked down the path that led out from Dig Straight Down, to one of the far reaches of the minigame district. On the left was Stress’s jousting event, on the right was a lava game that he believed was Xisuma’s, and directly in front of them, across a small bay, a structure of bricks and redstone blocks and water that he remembered Tango was working on.

“Have you heard of this?” he asked his companion. Grian shook his head.

“What is it?” he asked.

Mumbo narrowed his eyes. “I think that Tango is building that minigame he made in the third world. I remember people like False and Zueljin played it one time. This one looks a lot bigger though.”

His friend didn’t say anything.

“Wait a minute, didn’t I tell you about Boombox?” Mumbo asked suspiciously.

“Boombox?” Grian asked.

“The name of the game,” he explained. “I’m sure I told you about it once.”

“I don’t seem to recall it, then,” Grian replied.

Mumbo shrugged. “Okay, then.”

“What’s the game about?” Grian asked.

“You swim around in water passages and try to blow the other team up by placing TNT on the redstone floor,” he explained. “Two teams.”

“That’s a pity,” Grian remarked. “He won’t be able to test it or play it until Demise is over.”

They lapsed back into silence and continued along the path, walking along the back of Hermitland to where Cub’s Ravager Run was.

“I heard it’s fun, though,” Mumbo piped up. “I didn’t get to play it, but I heard the others saying that it was fun.”

Grian didn’t reply. “I need to head off now.”

“What? Why?” Mumbo asked.

“Just got some things I gotta do,” he answered.

Mumbo watched as he flew off.

~~~

Keralis took out an axe and broke some out of place planks. He jumped down from his perch on the roof of the new addition to New New Hermitville and looked up. Perfect.

He had been building a few new houses while his friend Bubbles worked on his giant diorite castle. He knew that Iskall wouldn’t be pleased with the block choice, and he just couldn’t  _ wait _ until Bubbles finished it so he could see the look on the Swede’s face.

The village was coming along nicely. Most of the villagers had disappeared along with most of the village houses, which meant less pesky mobs and more space to build more houses.

Bdubs chucked all his diorite into a chest on top of the hill. The andesite base was almost finished, and he was just starting to plan the diorite part. Launching off from the hill, he landed just behind Keralis.

The other builder knew that he was here. “What do you think of this new cottage?”

_ He’s more perceptive than normal _ , Bdubs noted. He squinted up at the wooden building. “It’s decent. Why are you asking me for building advice? You’ve never asked me for building advice.”

“Dunno, man,” Keralis shrugged. “Something just feels … strange, doesn’t it? About Doc’s mind-control thing and everything that’s just been happening.”

“Wh-why you ask me?” Bdubs spluttered. Keralis shrugged, then tensed.

“I hear something,” he whispered. Bdubs froze as well. “I think from in the trees behind the iron golem skeleton.”

Bdubs’s head snapped in that direction. He knew that if it was a hermit, they wouldn’t be sneaking in unless they were not a hermit or they were doing something underhanded. He followed Keralis as the other stepped towards the trees, right hand reaching towards his sword.

Keralis could hear something in the trees, but he couldn’t tell what. It didn’t sound like a mob, more like a hermit trying unsuccessfully to remain unseen and unheard. He pushed away some branches to see what looked like … Grian and Ren?

“What - why are you guys here?” he asked. “And sneaking around?”

Grian, who was situated in the branches of the tree, shrugged, while Ren, who was crouching on the ground, hissed.

“Speak, please,” Keralis said.

“Such clueless pieces of crap,” the one in the tree branches snarled.

“I know right? Think they’re so important, so high and mighty all the time,” the one on the ground added.

“What are you guys saying?” Keralis asked, feeling very confused and also very suspicious.

“Whatever, this is a waste of time,” Ren snapped. “Back to Plan A.”

Keralis reached to grab onto his arm to question him, but Ren violently ripped his arm out of his grip and the two ran away.

“What on earth was that?” Bdubs asked.

Keralis was very worried. He had a suspicion that either that wasn’t Grian and Ren at all, or that somehow they had become mind-controlled, just like Doc. “We gotta tell Shashwammy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the short chapter, but hey, there's lots of things to think about. I might release chapter 3 in a few hours once I'm done with it.
> 
> Nationalities exist now.


	3. And so the game begins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things don't add up but no-one talks to each other.

<Keralis1> shashwammy we have a problem

<BdoubleO100> come over to nnh immediately

<BdoubleO100> please?

<Xisuma> Why?

<Keralis1> can’t say over chat

<Keralis1> come on, shashwammy

X sighed. He knew that Keralis would continue annoying him until he finally caved and went to see whatever the matter was now.

<Xisuma> Fine, fine, whatever.

<Xisuma> Flying over now.

He tucked his communicator carefully into a pocket in his armor and launched off of the roof of his house in Hermitville. He weaved through the gaps between Grian, Mumbo and Iskall’s skyscrapers in the direction of New New Hermitville.

He passed over IDEA, which was looking as blue and yellow as ever. He passed over Falsewell, where he could see a few of the hermits. He passed over Area 77.

Area 77 … the fight in the hangar had only happened a few days ago, but as he flew over, he could already feel the nostalgia dripping from it. The airstrip, the HIB building - everything brought back lots of memories, and he knew that those memories could never be replaced (which was a good thing, because he knew that Scar’s were painful).

He cleared his head of these useless thoughts and continued on his journey. He flew up, up above the hill with Keralis’s starter house on it, and arrived in New New Hermitville.

He saw Keralis and Bdubs immediately. His two friends and IDEA members were standing beside the giant iron golem skeleton.

He landed, skidding slightly on the grass. “What is it?”

“So we saw these people,” Keralis started.

“Grian and Ren,” Bdubs added.

“In the bushes,” Keralis said.

“In a tree and on the ground,” Bdubs clarified.

“Probably spying on us,” Keralis added.

“And we found them and they ran away,” Bdubs said.

“They what now?” X asked, confused. “Did they do any damage?”

The two exchanged glances. “Actually, no,” they said in unison.

“Okay, fine, whatever,” X sighed. “I don’t know why this is so important, but I’ll talk to them.”

“Aw, thanks Shashwammy!” Keralis cried.

X rolled his eyes. Keralis and Bdubs watched as he activated his elytra and flew away.

As X flew, he took out his communicator.

<Xisuma> Ren and Grian, meet me in Falsewell.

<Renthedog> what why

<Grian> haha no

<Xisuma> I know that you’re in Falsewell right now, Grian

<Xisuma> Why can’t you just cooperate?

<Grian> i’m literally not

<Grian> you’re delusional

<Renthedog> WHY WE NEED MEET

<Xisuma> You know what you did

<Xisuma> Actually I don’t even know what you did.

<Xisuma> Just come, okay?

<Renthedog> yeah sure, why not

<Grian> no.

X sighed as he landed on the road outside the diner. He swore he’d seen Grian around a few hours ago, like at the meeting, and walking around Hermitland. He just couldn’t understand why the builder insisted on being so uncooperative all the time.

~~~

Grian tucked his communicator in his pocket and rolled his eyes. He really didn’t want to have to walk/fly all the way back to Falsewell without a nether tunnel. He knew that it would take about a million years.

What he didn’t know was that he had a replacement.

~~~

Ren shot out from the nether portal, turning sharply left as he activated his elytra. Being late to something organized by Xisuma was never a good idea.

He spammed rockets recklessly in an attempt to go faster. He aimed lower as the outline of Falsewell came into view.

X was waiting for him outside the diner, as well as what looked like Grian. He didn’t really want to talk to Grian, because Grian had been quite rude and mean to Doc at that meeting just then. But X was asking for them, so he went.

He landed in front of the two other hermits. X motioned at the door of the diner. “Why don’t we take a seat inside?”

“Sure,” he agreed. Grian, standing beside him, nodded. The trio stepped inside the diner one by one. Ren took a seat on the closest chair, but stood up again once he saw that neither of the other had sat down.

“Now,” X began. “Keralis tells me that the two of you have been misbehaving. Is this true?”

Ren thought for a while. He hadn’t been misbehaving in New New Hermitville for a while now. He hadn’t really been near New New Hermitville in the past week. The last - and only - time he had ever been there was a few weeks ago when he and Grian had thrown a few eggs and added a few fake buildings.

The one who called himself Grian knew what Ren was thinking about. He’d been well aware of that particular prank because of - someone - complaining about it. That someone had also been controlling Doc. He also knew of the prank - the term used very lightly - Xisuma was thinking about - he had just done it, after all.

“Oh. That,” he replied.

“Yes, that,” X replied to him, annoyed. “Now, Keralis didn’t tell me many details, so you’ll have to explain to me. What did you do and why?”

“I don’t know why he only spoke up about it now, but a few weeks ago we went over to NNH and, you know, threw a few eggs and built a few fake buildings,” Ren answered.

“Did you two hide in any trees?” X asked.

“What the hell, why - I mean, tree-hiding was a part of that. We definitely hid in some trees,” Ren said.

“So a few weeks ago …” X mused. “I wonder why they’ve only spoken up about it now. Anyhow, see you!”

With that, he waved and walked out the door, leaving Ren and his companion standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. Ren made a funny expression before turning to his friend. “See you, G!”

“Yeah, see you,” the other person muttered. As Ren left, he smiled. “See you die, that is,” he said to himself.

~~~

He read the book one last time, checking for any spelling or grammar errors.

_ NEW HERMIT EVENT _

_ Starts 15th October Noon GMT _

_ DEMISE _

_ This is a new game where the goal is simple: Don’t die. _

_ Pay 50 diamonds, add your name to the list and then proceed to live as long as you can. _

_ There’s a catch though. If you die - you lose, and you are officially out of the game. You are not allowed to kill or trap anyone who is still alive. _

_ Some final points: _

  * _This game is dangerous and you MAY lose your items. You must be OK with this when you sign up._



  * _God armor makes this game difficult, so when you sign up please take some armor from the chests provided. You can enchant them any way you please._


  * You may team up if you want to.


  * Go about your daily business as usual



_ GOOD LUCK AND STAY ALIVE - Grian _

He placed the book on the lectern. He hoped he’d replicated the obnoxious tone of that Grian character correctly. He was meant to be posing as him after all. He took out some of the diamonds he had been given when he had accepted the task and placed fifty of them carefully in

He stepped back to take a look. The hand made out of quartz to look like bone looked quite nice, if he did say so himself. He’d barely gotten any chance to build anything. These people took building and spare time for granted -  _ he _ was right to try and wipe them out.

And the one posing as Grian would certainly help  _ him _ . This game would allow his people to infiltrate the hermits, shifting into dead versions of the “demised” and gradually take over pulling the strings from backstage, eventually wiping them all out. He smiled to himself.

~~~

“Come on False, just let me go to the gaming district,” Scar pleaded. “I’m bored.”

“No,” False said firmly.

“Why?” Scar wailed.

“Stress’s orders,” she replied, taking another chip from the chip bag and turning a page on a book -  _ the _ book that had gotten Iskall killed.

“Since when did you follow Stress’s orders?” he asked drily.

“Since I realized that following them would really annoy you,” she replied.

The two of them were sitting in False’s storage room in her house in Falsewell, as good friends do. Scar was slumped across two shulker boxes and an ender chest while False was sitting inside an empty cauldron.

“Fair enough,” he sighed. “Please?”

“No.”

“Come on,” he whined.

“No means no,” False snapped.

“I’ll tell Iskall that you’re reading his fanfiction,” he challenged.

“Why do I care what he knows or does not know? This fanfiction is crap anyway,” she replied.

“I’ll tell him that you’ve enjoyed it and smiled while reading,” he added. “I’ll also tell Impulse that.”

He watched, amused, as False spluttered. “Fine, you little -”

“Right! Off we go!” Scar sang, interrupting her. He got up and skipped towards the door.

“NO RUNNING!” he heard False yell from behind him, and a yell and a clatter.

False cursed under her breath and propped the cauldron upright again. She stretched her legs and ran after Scar.

When she got out of the door, he was already halfway down the street to the bridge. “I said, NO RUNNING!”

She got out some rockets and took to flight, quickly catching up with him.

“No running,” she said sternly. “It’s not good for you.”

“But why are  _ you _ allowed to run then?” Scar asked.

“Because I’m not healing from injuries,” she answered.

“But I feel  _ sad _ now,” he complained. False knew that he didn’t actually, but decided to play along.

Scar thought of a really good idea. “How about if you don’t run or fly, I won’t run or fly?”

False made a noise that sounded like what Jellie would type on his communicator.

After she had regained her breath, she nodded. “Fine.”

~~~

“What’s this?” Scar asked, pointing at a stone brick structure next to Ravager Run.

“That is what I believe is a remake of Boombox,” False answered.

“Right, that TNT game. I remember hearing about it, though I never got to play it, because I only came in the fourth world,” he mused.

“It was … interesting,” False said. Scar snickered. They continued on their journey.

He was getting tired and he knew that False was too - walking was not something that the hermits did often. So when they came to the end of the bridge that ran along the far reaches of Hermitland, close to the back of the RUN sign, they threaded through the complicated redstone stuff and came out the front of RUN. Scar didn’t think that the other part of Hermitland could have changed  _ that _ much when he was in Falsewell so he didn’t bother going over there.

They continued along the path, taking the one that led generally towards Falsewell. They walked past NFD, now totally unused, past the stretch of land without any minigames, went past the bridge and the arch that led to the road that led to Falsewell, until they came to the shopping part of Hermitland.

Sahara Eats was looking as cheap as possible. He wondered how they managed to make  _ any _ profit with such low prices. He suspected that there were some suspicious ingredients in their golden carrots. Then came Stress’s ice ship. The Jingler had struck again, and the sign now read “BABY ICE ICE”. After that was the 1.14 branch of Cherry.

He didn’t bother checking the sales - he hadn’t stocked up in a long time.

He continued along the path. There was another pop-up shop, XP ME, a large space of grass, DSD, a path that led to the nether portal that no-one used, and then -

“What’s this?” he asked rhetorically, knowing that False wouldn’t know. On the side of the path was what seemed to be a wall of black concrete with a skeletal hand on top of it.

False stepped up to the lectern and flipped through the book. “Grian’s starting a game called Demise. Last man - or woman - alive gets the entry diamonds.”

“That sounds cool. Might sign up later,” Scar mused. “That’s a pity for Tango and Boombox - he won’t be able to play it.”

False opened her mouth to say something else, but Scar cut her off. “What’s that over there?”

He pointed to a giant yellow building in the distance. False cringed heavily. “Oh, right - you haven’t seen it yet, have you? That’s Idea. X, Keralis and Bdubs made it. It sells a lot of stuff.”

“So another retailing rival,” Scar hissed. “It’s okay, we beat Sahara, we can beat them.”

“If you say so,” False muttered.

They reached the end of the path and turned back to get to the road that led to Falsewell. As they were walking, False remembered the mind-controller.

“Do you think that there’s a new enemy on the loose that wants to kill us?” she asked.

“Eh, I guess,” Scar answered, scuffing the ground with his shoe. “There must have been something controlling Doc, so I guess that’s the best possible answer”

“It’s not a good answer, but it’s accurate, I guess,” False said. “Hey, imagine if the enemy was someone like Evil X reincarnated? That would be so ironic. X would  _ flip out _ .”

“That would be ironic, but it would not be funny in any other way, because Evil X is very scary,” Scar answered.

He knew that False had meant that as a joke, but something just didn’t add up to him. Perhaps she was right after all?

~~~

Doc was whistling as he strolled through the streets of Hermitland. He was going to take a look at the new game he’d heard about the one - to his dismay - that had been made by Grian.

He’d seen False and Scar earlier today, and both of them had been pretty chill with him, so he had that going with him. Nobody except for Grian really seemed to hold anything against him, which was great. Not that he cared of course. Psh, caring what others think? What a silly idea.

His eyes landed on the black wall. He read through the book on the lectern. It seemed pretty generic, to be honest. Well, he could have it going on in the background while he did other stuff. He really wanted to make a new raid farm design as well.

He took a pen from inside the chest and wrote his name down in the book provided. He got out fifty diamonds and put them in the chest. It was pretty expensive, but if enough people played, the grand prize would be quite a decent amount of diamonds.

As he put the diamonds in the chest though, he felt someone watching him. He turned around, but there was no-one there.

_ Huh. Strange _ , he thought, but didn’t think anything of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There you have it kids - a rushed chapter!
> 
> I have no further chapters written, so I might take a break for a few days so I can get a headstart and get some stuff done. I'm aiming for at least two chapters written ahead of schedule so that if anything happens I can still update chapters for two more days.


	4. And so hermitkind self-isolated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which people die. Need I say more?

The man who had started it all stood in front of the board. He retrieved the signup book from the chest.

_Grian_

_Keralis_

_Joe Hills_

_TFC_

_iJevin_

_Stress <3_

_False_

_Mumboooo_

_Bdubs_

_HumanCleo_

_Cubfan135_

_Tango_

_Impulse_

_Doc the Destroyer_

_Iskall85_

_Ren-diggity-diggity-diggity-dog_

_Xisuma_

He had made sure that the real Grian knew that he was in the game. He had made sure that someone had talked to him about it, so that he knew of it and he knew that he was in the game. His personality would make him not talk about why the others were saying that he made the game, to save face.

He remembered that Scar had told him - asked him - to sign up on his behalf, since False wouldn’t let him out of the boundaries of Falsewell. He quickly scribbled down _Goodtimeswithscar_ underneath X’s name.

He snapped the book shut. He tossed it onto the floor and took out the diamonds from the chest. He could turn those into blocks and turn the hand the other way until it looked like it was holding the diamonds - yeah, that seemed like a good idea.

He made quick work of that. After he had finished, he took a few masks of the hermits he had gathered, mostly those who had signed up. The only people he knew of who hadn’t signed up was Zedaph.

He hung the masks on the wall underneath a sign that said ALIVE. He cleaned up the mess he had made, and walked away.

~~~

The next two weeks passed. No-one seemed to be taking any chances. Many of the hermits had set up bunkers far away from civilization.

 _The strange things these people do for diamonds_ , thought the Grian look-alike as he sat on a chair in the diner in Falsewell. The town was completely empty - Doc was working on a raid farm in Area 77, Scar was working on some villager thing for his redstone shop and False had moved back into the main island. The real Grian had hardly been seen anywhere in the past week.

What if the real Grian was planning something? He didn’t know what the real Grian was doing thousands of blocks away, but what if he knew that he had a replacement and was planning to foil their plans?

_No, don’t doubt the plan. You know the stories - the good guys always win, and you are a good guy._

He stood up, throwing some paper on the table. It was time to make the game go a little faster. His orders could not wait.

If he could somehow make the participants die sooner, he could allow his fr-comrades to invade faster.He set out towards the gaming district again as an idea formed in his head.

Demise Dares. The name was almost laughable. But it would work, and it would aid him in his mission. So he set up a small game and used some more of his diamonds as bait. If everything worked out perfectly, he would be able to get some of the hermits demised.

He was able to contact Rendog and Stressmonster who were both interested in his game. Ren was going to come first.

He was currently sitting on the edge of the tower of water. Ren had said that he would come in a few hours after they had met in Falsewell a few hours ago, so he was getting a bit impatient.

He saw a flash of enchanted gold armor, and turned to see Ren running over from the bridge to Hermitville.

“Why aren’t you wearing any armor, dude?” he asked as he caught his breath.

“Don’t feel like it,” he answered. The real reason was that he was afraid that his armor wouldn’t match up with the real Grian’s and he would draw attention to himself.

“Okay,” Ren shrugged. “So you’re going to dare me to do stuff and I could die if I do it.”

He nodded. “You could die but I have faith in you. And that’s why there are lots of diamonds on the line. Every dare can make you fifty diamonds. Fifty!”

“Ooh, now we’re cooking with gas, my dude. Now we’re talking. You put diamonds in front of me, I can do pretty much anything.”

“Yeah,” he laughed. He didn’t understand why diamonds were so valuable to the hermits. It was almost as if they were addicted to the shiny blue glow. “You ready for your first dare?”

Ren took a deep breath. The Grian look-alike pressed the button on the dispenser and read out loud.

“Catch the totem.”

“So, catch the totem,” Ren repeated.

“So basically, I’m going to make a tower and I’m going to give you a totem of undying. You have to throw the totem off the top, and jump after it. No wings allowed,” he said, as he took scaffolding out of a chets and began stacking them on top of each other.

“Uh-huh, wings,” said Ren, eyeing his suspiciously. “It won’t matter, because I’m not wearing an elytra anyway.”

After the one who looked like Grian finished building the tower, he climbed onto it and began making his way up. Once he reached the top, he heard the man on the ground begin talking.

“So if you survive you get fifty diamonds. If you don’t, well … splat goes the Rendog,” he said, chuckling. “Are you ready?”

“Yes, I am,” Ren declared.

“Very well,” Grian replied. “Rendog, I dare you to catch the totem. Go!”

Ren felt his arms moving robotically as he tossed the totem in the air. He waited for a few moments before he jumped off after it.

He felt the adrenaline rush through him as he reached to grasp the totem. And just before he hit the ground, his hands closed around the small golden object.

He landed on the ground with a splat, but unlike normal, he didn’t break anything - he didn’t even feel pain. “Oh, my dude, I-”

“That’s fifty diamonds for you!” Grian interrupted him. He seemed cheerful, but Ren couldn’t help but feel a little suspicious. “Do you want to do another one.”

“I’ve already won back my Demise money … fine, I have nothing to lose,” Ren sighed.

He saw Grian walk up to the dispenser and press the button again. “Exit the aquarium.”

“Oh, this thing?” he asked, motioning towards the tower of water and glass that Grian had been sitting on.

“Yup,” he replied. “So there’s a layer of ice at the top, and magma at the bottom on every block except for one. So what you’ve got to do is punch through the ice at the top, above the dirt block.”

“That seems alright,” Ren mused. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

He walked to the entrance to the chamber and opened the two gates. He heard Grian speak from behind him. “Rendog, I dare you to exit the aquarium!”

He took a deep breath and leaped into the aquarium immediately. He swam to the furthest block, where the dirt block was, so that he could move upwards. He began punching the ice block above him while he ran out of air. He found himself quickly inhaling the water, and as his vision began to darken, the block broke.

He floated up towards the surface, inhaling gulps of air. He climbed out of the tank, soaked, but still alive. Without thinking, he leaped off from the top of the tank …

And died to fall damage.

He immediately respawned on the bed next to the tower of scaffolding. He didn’t know whether to cry, or laugh, but as he dissolved into giggles, he guessed it was the latter.

Grian was laughing too, but as Ren listened carefully, it didn’t really seem to be laughing. More like … cackling. He was very worried but didn’t say anything. He waved goodbye to Grian and continued on to Hermitville to get back to his base.

~~~

The next volunteer the Grian in Hermitland was contacted by was Stress. She had arrived soon after Ren had left.

He watched as she passed around the area. “You right there?”

“What?” Stress asked. “Oh yeah, I’m fine. Nuffin’ to worry abou’ here. Jus’ a tad nervous.”

“That’s alright,” he assured her. “Do you still want to do it?”

“Yup,” she replied. “So, what do I do?”

He stepped over to the dispenser holding pieces of paper and pressed the button. “Exit the aquarium.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“One of the dares. Ren died on this one, just so you know. You sure you don’t wanna back out?” he asked one last time.

“I’m sure,” Stress said confidently. “Ren died o’ fall damage, I’m not going to do tha’. Fifty diamonds are on the line. Let’s go.”

Like Ren, she opened the gates.

Like Ren, she took a deep breath and jumped into the aquarium.

Like Ren, she immediately started punching her way through the ice.

Unlike Ren, once she got through the ice and out of the tank, she didn’t jump off immediately. She stayed on the top and regained a few hearts before jumping down from the tower.

“Good job!” he congratulated her. “Do you want to do another one?”

She thought for a while. She had already won all her Demise money back, so what harm was there in doing another one? “Yeah, sure!”

She watched as Grian pressed the button again. “Reach -65 in the void.”

“Oh dear,” she said, as he let the paper go. “It seems that we’re going to the end.”

~~~

They flew all the way to the end portal, via the nether, and jumped in. Arriving on the other side, she followed Grian to a platform that he had prepared beforehand.

“So what do I haf’ to do?” she asked.

“What you’ve got to do is take your communicator to see your coordinates, and jump into the void like so,” he explained, leaping backwards off the platform and flying up again. “When you reach Y minus 65, you fly up again to avoid dying.”

Stress peered over the edge of the platform. The void was one of the more painful ways to die - first you grow more and more tired, then you feel like your insides are burning up, then other painful things happen to you.

“Fine, I’ll do it,” she declared. She checked the durability of her elytra and, rockets and communicator in hand, jumped off.

She watched the numbers rapidly growing smaller along the y-axis until she hit -65. As quickly as possible, she spammed rockets everywhere, managing to fly out of the void. She landed heavily back on the platform.

“I am never … doing … tha’ … again,” she panted as she caught her breath. The adrenaline gradually left her system.

“Right! Good job! Another 50 diamonds! You have officially made a profit from Demise!” he declared. “Do you want to do another one?”

She thought about it. There were only two other challenges that she had seen over in Hermitland. The one apart from the aquarium had seemed to be a tunnel with lava on the floor. Surely that couldn’t be too bad - if she had to fly through it, she could. She considered herself a pretty good flyer.

“Sure!” she said. So they returned to Hermitland and Demise Dares.

They both landed on the grass beside Demise Dares. Stress watched as Grian pressed the button again. She caught the paper before it hit the floor. “Fly through the tube.”

“Okay!” Grian said. “What you’ve got to do is to -”

He launched into flight, flying around the sky above Demise Dares until suddenly, he shot through the tube that Stress had noticed before. She had predicted correctly.

“Righ’. Okay, then,” she mumbled. She checked her elytra durability again, before remembering she had already checked it, and felt very silly.

“Are you ready?” Grian asked her.

She narrowed her eyes, reading to take off into the sky. “Yes.”

“Stressmonster, I dare you to fly through the tube. Go!” Grian shouted.

She took off immediately.

 _Well, I’ve got to get into the tube first. That means taking minimal banging-into-the-walls damage._ She flew upwards until she began to slow down, and gradually slowed down as she spiralled towards the entrance to the tunnel.

As soon as she came within reach of the tunnel, she used up many of her rockets to make her go very fast. She attempted to smallen herself as she went through. She could feel the overwhelming heat from the lava, could hear the wind rushing in her ears.

And she was through, with nothing but some patches of skin where the lava had been a little too hot.

“Again? Are you for real right now?” Grian asked incredulously. “Fine, you’re very good at doing this. There _is_ one more challenge, but I don’t think you’ll want to do it. You can walk away here with a hundred diamond profit, or you can push your luck in doing the final challenge.”

“What is it?” she asked, reaching for the button on the dispenser. She pressed it, and read what was on it.

“Catch the totem,” she said.

“Oh, right. That one,” Grian mused. “It’s not that hard - even Ren managed to survive this one. What you’ve got to do is jump off from the tower of scaffolding that I’m going to build, and catch the totem that you’ll throw off before you and live. You can use an elytra - you’re meant to use an elytra, but Ren did it without one. He just jumped off and caught it.”

“That seems simple enough,” Stress remarked. “Right, I’ll do it.”

She watched as Grian made a tower of scaffolding. She took out a totem from the chest. As soon as he was done, she began the climb. When she reached the top, she let out a yell to let Grian know she was ready.

“Okay!” he yelled back. “Stressmonster, I dare you to catch the totem.”

She tossed the totem out a decent distance, then waited and jumped off after it. Her elytra activated, but her frantic movements caused her to fly to who-knows-where, far away from the totem. She hit the ground with a splat.

She opened her eyes to see the sky, and she realized that she was lying on top of the orange bed near the chests. “Aw man, I failed tha’ one!”

“It’s okay,” Grian assured her. “You’ve already made 100 diamonds. Wow, and they were _my_ diamonds. I should close the game soon before I go broke.”

“Wha’ a shame,” she sighed. She gathered her tools and armor up and waved goodbye to Grian. “See you around!”

~~~

He had also done a dare for Xisumavoid, the one who held the most power in the server. Unfortunately, he lived, but hope was not lost.

X was sipping some tea while visiting Cub’s house in Hermitville when he saw someone outside the building. He opened the door to get a better look and saw what seemed to be Rendog, except grey.

“Hey, Ren,” he waved. He didn’t know what he was up to, being grey, almost as if he was dead, because he was, in Demise. Ren was holding a golden hoe, which Xisuma assumed was meant to be a scythe. He was dressed in dark and tattered clothing.

“Greetings.” Ren replied, except it didn’t sound like Ren. It had a certain Rendoggy feel to it, but it was much deeper and much more menacing.

“Uh, hey, Ren,” X replied. “Do you want to join Cub and I for tea?”

“I am not the one they call Rendog, I am _Grimdog_ ,” Ren insisted. X rolled his eyes and chuckled. “And no. But are you busy, apart from having tea with Cub?”

“No, not really,” he replied. He poked his head into the room to see Cub gravely finishing his tea. “Do you mind if I go somewhere with Ren?”

“Not at all,” Cub replied, setting his teacup down.

“O-okay then, I’m going now,” X mumbled. “Bye!”

He stepped outside and closed the door behind him. Ren motioned for him to follow him and he did.

They walked down the path, through the town hall, left through the town hall, where Ren’s RV used to be, down along that path, until they got to the opening in the wall. They went through the gate, continued down the path, past the ConCorp UFO until they came to the un-Jingled Hermitland sign. They went through and walked all the way through the southerner part of Hermitland along the stone road, through the tunnel, past False’s shooting game until they came to Speedy Pines.

X had heard a great deal about Speedy Pines. It was a racetrack with boats and ice and boats on ice that Rendog had been building for a decent amount of time. He didn’t really agree with it, Speedy Pines being sponsored by Sahara and all that, but he knew that Ren had been working very hard on it.

Now, X wasn’t stupid. He knew that Ren was probably looking to murder him, which was totally against the rules of Demise. Grian had expressly forbidden the dead people from killing or trapping the alive people and X knew that Ren would normally never disobey Grian. Unless this wasn’t Ren at all …

_Psh, who am I kidding? The mind-controller mind-controls, that’s all. There’s no way he or she could possibly turn into one of us. How stupid._

“What I need youto do,” Ren said as he led X through Speedy Pines, “is to come up here and do a test run.”

They arrived at a platform where X could see the very start of the Speedy Pines track.

“So what you do is you take a boat, you put the boat down on the yellow concrete, you press the button, you fall onto the track and you begin your run,” Ren explained.

“And how do I know you don’t have a TNT trap somewhere along the track, ready to kill me and prevent me from winning Demise?” X asked.

“You don’t,” Ren replied. “You just have to trust me if you want.”

 _He’s definitely hiding something_ , X realized. _I’m going to die here._

He didn’t really want to die (who did?) but there was something suspicious about Ren (or Grimdog, as he called himself), but it was X’s duty to protect the server. So he played along.

“Put your stuff in there,” said Ren, pointing to another chest. X knew that it was to save his stuff in a trap, but he decided to think or pretend to think that it was in case he was killed by a mob or hit the walls too many times.

He took out a boat from the chest, and placed it down, He climbed in, placed a boat down and pushed the button on the emerald block.

And he was through. He steered the boat steadily along the ice track, and decided to look around, Speedy Pines was quite a beautiful race track, apart from those ugly Sahara signs everywhere. The spruce forest around the track was very nice, as was the block pallette and everything else.

He bumped into the walls of the track many times, but hopefully didn’t waste too much time. He hadn’t seen any signs of traps yet.

He saw a line of pressure plates as he neared the end, and he knew, he just knew, that it was death.

He tried to slow the boat down, but it didn’t work. He just slid over the pressure plates, revealing a chamber of water underneath with TNT lining the sides. He clutched his totem of undying tightly in his left hand as he did everything he could in his power to free himself.

But either his pickaxe wasn’t moving quickly enough, or the adrenaline had caused him to move too fast, but as X’s totem shattered with the first explosion, he could do nothing but wait for his inevitable death. As he took his last breaths, trying to position himself in the best possible place to have a quick death, he heard deep, terrifying laughter coming from Ren - Grimdog, above him on the platform.

Then the explosion came.

He respawned with a large inhale on a bed just outside of Speedy Pines. He was on the other side of False’s shooting game to the entrance to Speedy Pines.

He quickly caught his breath and stood up. He felt his communicator beep.

<Renthedog> welcome to the dead, my dude!

<Renthedog> why did you blow up? Surely stress didn’t kill you

<Renthedog> anyways, come over to speedy pines when you have time, okay?

<Renthedog> i need someone to test it

<Renthedog> and you’re the safest person to do it

_What. the. HECK?_

_What is going on? I was just at Speedy Pines! That wasn’t Ren, was it? It was Grimdog. But who is he and is he related to the mind control thing? I need to find out more. I need to protect them._

He made a beeline towards the entrance to SP. He stormed through the corridors as quickly as he could. He almost tripped over the stairs multiple times.

He emerged onto the platform which he now discovered was a bridge. Grimdog was still standing there.

“Who are you?” X demanded. “You’re not Ren.”

Grimdog let out a low chuckle, which gradually evolved into the same laughter that he had heard before he died. He made a grab at him but before he could, Grimdog _poofed_ into a pile of black dust.

X stood frozen in shock. He had been right. Ren and whoever _this_ was weren’t the same person. Which meant that Stress might also have a dead clone.

_Holy crap. I’ve got to get to the bottom of this._

_I’ve got to keep them safe._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Demise: causing people to self-isolate before self-isolation was a thing. How I miss those days.


	5. And so they kick the bucket

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which bros are bro'd, deals are struck and people blow up.

Grian had heard all about everything that had happened while he was away.

For example, he knew that someone had created a new game called Demise.

He didn’t know why everybody thought that someone was him.

However, he also knew that apparently, he had caused the deaths of Ren and Stress, which also caused the death of Xisuma.

But it wasn’t him. But everybody thought it was him, which was strange.

Either he had amnesia or this was a very elaborate hoax.

He had finished Ren’s birthday present and had told him the coordinates, and was now back on the main island. He had been building a bunker underneath the Sahara diamond pile along with Iskall.

He exited the bunker and emerged in the front of Sahara. He had heard that there was something going on in front of the stonks board so he flew over the building.

What he saw was a box made out of wood with a red bow on the top. Wood - that meant Big Logz Inc, didn’t it? And Ren was a part of Big Logz, and Ren was dead, and Ren believed that Grian had killed him.

It was so obviously a trap. He took a few potions from a stand made by Breath Over Death and approached the box cautiously. Upon opening the door, he found a chest. A _chest_. It was like Ren wasn’t even trying to be unsuspicious.

He cautiously opened the chest and felt the floor give way underneath him. He fell for a few moments before he flapped his wings and began a slower descent towards the bottom.

“Not even close,” he muttered to himself. As he hit the bottom, he looked up again. He could try to fly out. That seemed like a dangerous but fast option.

He launched into the air, using many rockets. He hit his head on the roof and had to break a few planks as well. He finally made it out - slightly out of breath, but alive.

He caught his breath as he sat down on the grass. He then noticed something else.

There was a curiously-shaped box made of terracotta on a lower part of Sahara. It was pink and blue and had holes along the front. He went to investigate.

It was probably also a trap. From the pink color scheme, he guessed it was made by Stress. Why on earth were they mad at him? Plus, hadn’t the rules stated that the dead people weren’t allowed to trap or kill the people still alive?

Strange.

Anyway, he wanted to do it. He hadn’t lost any diamonds when signing up, because he hadn’t signed up. The reason he didn’t tell anyone that he hadn’t signed up and someone (identity unknown) had signed up for him was that it was probably a prank and he didn’t want to let the others worry.

 _Plus_ , he thought as he drank some of the potions he had gathered _, I’ve got regen, fire resistance and an instant health potion. I’ll be fine if it really is a trap._

He decided to play fair by standing directly on top of the pink carpet which he assumed hid a dispenser or a dropper, and hit the button in the leftmost hole.

The sound of a dispenser dispensing something sounded and he realized that it had dispensed a totem of undying onto the floor. He picked it up.

_Huh, that’s strange. I thought it would be something dangerous. Like lava, or a pufferfish, or something._

He continued pressing the button.

The next one gave him two ender pearls.

The third one gave him a piece of coal.

The fourth one gave him some bone meal.

The fifth one gave him a few golden apples.

The sixth one fired an egg into the air.

The seventh one gave him a book by Stress that said BOO!

The eighth one gave him nothing.

He pressed it again. Still nothing. He could hear the dispenser sounding, but he wasn’t getting anything.

Perhaps it was out of stock? Maybe Mumbo or Iskall had come along beforehand and already taken out the useful stuff. Perhaps it had been something like a beacon or an enchanted golden apple. He doubted it.

Shrugging, he returned the loot to the dispensers. He took off the carpet from the last one and reached inside.

He pulled out a dragon head. A dragon head with curse of binding on it.

_Oh. Oh. OH._

Aha. So that was what had been meant to be dispensed onto his head. But he was wearing a helmet, so it didn’t work.

 _Aha. Stress, I have outsmarted your outsmarting_.

But a dragon head with curse of binding just lying around was too dangerous. He needed to do something about it. Hopefully give it to someone else.

He decided to call Iskall.

~~~

They met in the meeting room a few minutes later.

Grian was sitting on his throne of wood while Iskall was sitting on a humble peasant chair, wearing what seemed like fake braids and a dress.

“What on earth are you wearing under your armour, dude?” he asked Iskall.

He watched as Iskall undid his armor.

“What are you? Are you a farmer now? Are you farmer Iskall?”

“I’m not,” Iskall replied indignantly. “I’m _Dorothy_ , man.”

“What?”

Iskall ignored him and went back to his chair. “I look fabulous though.”

It was at this moment that Grian realized that Iskall was not wearing a helmet and had not been wearing a helmet since the beginning of their meeting.

“Wait, can I show you something?” he asked the Swede.

“Not suspicious at all,” Iskall muttered. Grian raised his eyebrows. “Fine, fine.”

He beckoned to his friend and the two of them walked to the opening in the window of the meeting room and leaped off. On first glance, Iskall could immediately see a blue and pink box.

He followed as Grian landed in front of it. “So, what’s this?”

“I have no idea,” Grian answered. “I believe that it’s from Stress. I thought it was a trap at first, but look - it just gives you gifts.”

Iskall watched as Grian reached to press a few buttons and some items were dispensed onto the ground through the carpet.

“That’s cool,” he remarked.

“Yeah, but this one,” Grian said, reaching towards the rightmost button, “does nothing.”

“Really?” Iskall asked. He pressed the button himself, and immediately felt something on his head.

He reached up cautiously. It seemed scaly and … black.

“DID YOU JUST PUT A DRAGON HEAD ON ME?” he yelped. He felt at the top and sure enough, there were two horns protruding from the sides of his headwear. “What the frick, dude?”

He reached to undo the strap that held the mask on him but found that he couldn’t. It wasn’t jammed, or anything, and Iskall finally realized what was going on.

“DID YOU JUST PUT A _CURSE OF BINDING_ DRAGON HEAD ON ME?” he shrieked.

He watched as Grian cackled. “I’m sorry dude.”

“Did you know this was going to happen?” Iskall demanded.

“Uh, yes,” Grian replied. Iskall sighed and shook his head, then had to stay still to get used to the added weight on his face.

“Why, Grian, why?” Iskall asked. “Was this even from Stress?”

“Yes,” Grian replied. “And I figured out how to use it to my advantage. You’ve got to be more careful, dude. You’re lucky I’m not trying to kill you. You’ve got to wear a helmet.”

“I don’t see why I can do that _now_ , with this freaking dragon head on my face,” Iskall replied. Grian simply laughed.

~~~

Jevin was very worried.

For one, his fidget spinner seemed to be a mob farm in disguise.

Secondly, it seemed that there were now three dead people. Which wasn’t saying much, since they were forbidden from killing the still-alive people, but too many - or too little - for his liking.

If it had taken three weeks for three hermits to die, that meant twenty weeks for the around twenty hermits who had signed up for Demise to die. Which was a long time, and Jevin didn’t really feel like looking over his shoulder constantly for the next four months.

That didn’t mean he wanted to be the fourth dead, though.

Which was why he was being extra cautious. He wasn’t going to risk dying to a trap in the nether tunnels, so he was flying all the way from his fidget spinner to the shopping district to buy some stuff. Which was good because his base wasn’t that far from the shopping district via overworld.

He was flying a bit south-east of the main island when he got out his communicator when he heard a few of the other hermits talking. He didn’t notice that he was flying a bit off-course now, a bit too north for his liking.

It took him noticing Mumbo’s giant sphere of a base to realize that he had flown too north. In his shock, he used too many rockets, causing him to fly at an abnormal pace. He tried to slow down, but his elytra was out of control and he could do nothing as he slammed into the wall of one of the buildings and died.

He respawned back at his base.

 _Ugh_ , he thought. _I’m dead. Great._

Now he had to get back his stuff before it despawned. He took a spare elytra and some rockets from a shulker box that was lying around and began flying back to Mumbo’s base.

His stuff was _everywhere_. The building that he had crashed into had vines all over it, and he had to climb everywhere to get it all back.

Once he had gotten everything back (he thought. There might’ve been some unimportant stuff he missed), he placed an ender chest down to put his spare elytra away and get some diamonds for his shopping trip.

As he took out his shulker box of money and placed it on the ground, he felt someone watching him. He turned around, but couldn’t see anyone. He felt the air and grabbed onto an invisible squishy thing that almost felt like himself, but obviously wasn’t himself because he was him.

“X, you’ve got to stop trolling us like this,” he mumbled out loud.

~~~

Another Jevin watched the real Jevin gather all his stuff and fly away. He had almost been caught, but from what he had heard, the real Jevin had thought it was the admin playing a prank on him.

He raised the microphone on his headpiece to his mouth as he became non-invisible again, this time mostly grey with chunks of blue. This had been an interesting choice. He had questioned the blue parts but he had been told to keep it that way, and he knew better than to defy orders.

“Can you hear me?” he asked.

There was a crackle of static, but then a voice spoke up on the other end of the line. “Yup.”

“Okay. I’ve seen that blue slime guy I’m meant to be die,” he began.

“Yeah, I heard,” his partner interrupted.

He rolled his eyes “Whatever. I checked his wallet, and it turns out that he has less diamonds than that Scar character. If we can use this information correctly -”

“These hermits seem to have an infatuation with diamonds. I wouldn’t be surprised if they would kill the ones who have more diamonds than them,” said his partner. “So what if we go after Scar, pretending to be the real whoever-you’re-pretending-to-be?”

“That was what I was _going to say_ ,” he replied indignantly. “Yes, exactly.”

“I believe that Scar is currently working on a redstone factory on an island a ways south-east of the big island. He probably doesn’t use the overworld to go places, unlike your person. So if we trap a nether portal he or anyone else is likely to use, he’ll die. If someone else dies in his place, we’ll just try again, though he’s more likely to go through the nether than others since he lacks a base at the factory,” his partner went on.

“Right. You’re posing as the admin guy, right? Eh-zoo-mah? I heard that he’s more likely to do this sort of thing than the guy I’m imitating. So you should do it,” ‘Jevin’ suggested.

“That sounds logical, but I’m assuming you’re just saying this to get out of doing it yourself,” said the person on the other end of the line. “Fine, I’ll do it.”

“Great!”

“Yeah, whatever,” ‘X’ sighed. “Bye.”

He abruptly hung up. ‘Jevin’ blinked. He had always been quite a strange figure, but he could tell there was something bothering him.

 _Well yeah, duh,_ he thought. _We’re conducting a huge operation to take down a group of evil masterminds. And killing them all. And they respawn, which is annoying._

He remembered the day that they had found out that these people respawned. His friend, who was now pretending to be the one they called Stressmonster101, had been watching the ones called “False” and “Impulse” fight, and Impulse, to her surprise, had awoken in his bed immediately after dissolving into white dust.

He would leave his partner-in-crime to it, then. He didn’t doubt his abilities one bit.

~~~

Scar needed to get some bone meal. He was working on the Cherry factory, and he needed to decorate the interior better, which was why he was going through the nether to buy bone meal from the shopping district.

He stepped through the portal. He made sure not to fall off the precarious bridge that he had constructed. The nether was a very scary place, especially with the lava.

He peered over the edge of his netherrack bridge. He could see another nether tunnel almost directly under him. He didn’t know where it led, but it was comforting to know that if he ever fell, he might have a place to land.

He cautiously made his way along the bridge and into the cobblestone tunnel. He sped up a little as he neared the main eastern nether tunnel. As soon as he got there, he calmed down, feeling a lot safer.

He made his way through the tunnel and down into the nether hub. He decided that he would try Sahara first, so he located the Sahara portal and went through.

And emerged in a dark room.

He stumbled around, unsure of where to put his feet, before he lost his footing and slipped into a tank of pufferfish.

 _They’ve got me_ , he thought. He tried to grab some blocks or a sword or _anything_ he could save himself with, but the poison had taken effect and his limbs became numb.

He tried to move his mouth, but the water was rushing in, and he simply hung his head and died.

He awoke in the redstone factory again. Everything hurt, and to add insult to injury, he had now lost Demise.

He felt his communicator beep and he buried his face in his hands. It was probably Ren, Stress, X or Jevin gloating over their win. He took it out of his pocket.

<iJevin> you okay, dude?

<iJevin> pufferfish is a painful way to go

<GoodTimeWithScar> what do you mean

<GoodTimeWithScar> so it was you who killed me

<iJevin> what? no way

<iJevin> the rulebook says that us dead people aren’t allowed to harm you

<GoodTimeWithScar> then explain to me why then ren killed x?

<GoodTimeWithScar> don’t deny that it wasn’t you

<GoodTimeWithScar> i can’t believe you, jevin

<iJevin> it wasn’t me

<Xisuma> That is true

<Xisuma> I’ve been monitoring everybody’s movements

<Xisuma> and Jevin has not left his base since he went to the shopping district

<GoodTimeWithScar> WHAT

<iJevin> you’ve been monitoring our movements???

<Xisuma> Well, yes

<iJevin> i don’t feel safe anymore

Scar snorted and rolled his eyes. He didn’t know who to believe, and whether both of them were telling the truth. They were both dead, after all. Apart from the total violation of his privacy, at least tracking the movements of the hermits made Scar feel a bit safer from everything that was going on.

A part of him still found what Jevin said very, very suspicious. Oh well. At least he knew to steer clear of the blue slime for the time being.

~~~

Doc was slightly perhaps a bit worried.

Firstly, it seemed that one of his only friends was now dead.

Secondly, none of the hermits who had demised seemed to be following the “don’t kill the still-alive hermits, it’s bad for you” rule. Which meant that his life was probably in danger.

Which meant that it was time to visit Grimdog.

He was as silent as possible when he approached the graveyard in the Halloween district. He didn’t want to arouse any attention from whatever else could be lurking in the shadows.

He crept through the graveyard, the dirt beneath him suspiciously soft. He spotted Grimdog’s crypt and slowly edged towards it.

And felt his ankle being grabbed by a zombie.

“Ew!” he said out loud. He took out his trident and made quick work of the zombie, but his ankle still felt weird. He quickly shut his mouth and continued.

He climbed down the ladder in ~~Ren~~ Grimdog’s crypt to see the hermit in question holding a trident, standing in the middle of the underground chamber.

“I’ve been expecting you,” he hissed. Doc rolled his eyes.

“You can drop the act, Ren. I need a favor,” he said.

Grimdog studied him intently. “What favor?”

“What will I owe you in return for your protection in Demise?” he asked.

“So you travelled here, one of the most dangerous places around, to ask for your safety?” Grimdog asked. “Very well.”

He thought for a while. He could ask for something that could seriously affect the other hermits and then eventually break Doc’s mind through the guilt. But that seemed a bit … mean.

_Ha. What I’m doing isn’t half as bad as what they do in a day._

“If you want my protection,” he began, “you will have to give me a soul from one of your friends. In return, I, along with the rest of my dead kin, will never touch you. A soul for a soul. A simple enough trade.”

Doc scrutinized Grimdog. He could see the malicious intent in his eyes, but he couldn’t back out now. “Okay.”

“Bring me proof of the murder and the deal will be struck. Return within twenty-four hours,” Grimdog ordered.

Doc nodded and stepped back. He knew that the _thing_ which stood before him now was not Ren. The thing was, he didn’t know if it was someone pretending to be Ren or someone controlling Ren, like how someone had controlled him.

“The deal is done. See you in a day,” he told Grimdog. He wasn’t going to kill any of the hermits that were in Demise. Oh no. He was going to go after somebody who hadn’t signed up for the game. He was going to go after Zedaph.

Grimdog watched grimly as Doc climbed back up the ladder. He had someone in mind to take the dead form of whoever the cyborg was going to kill. Everything was going to work out perfectly, and they would finally take revenge on the one who had caused their plan to fail the first time.

~~~

Doc sat thinking. He was sitting on the rim of the circle that his raid farm was going to be shaped as. He was deep in thought.

He didn’t really want to go after someone who was still alive, so Zed, who hadn’t signed up for Demise, was a viable option. Another option was going after one of those already dead, particularly their dead versions, but he didn’t know what problems that could cause.

Which left Zed.

He had participated in Zed’s famous “Is That Sheep Looking At Me?” a few months ago. He hadn’t spoken to Zed much since then.

He took out his communicator. Hopefully whoever Grimdog was didn’t have access to a communicator.

<Docm77> hey zed. Do you want to come over to the raid farm?

<Zedaph> the what now?

<Docm77> i’m making a raid farm

<Zedaph> huh. why?

<Docm77> there are some things i want to discuss with you

<Zedaph> not suspicious at all

<Zedaph> fine, but i reserve the right to publicly humiliate you if something bad happens to me

<Docm77> excellent! meet me at the entrance in falsewell

He smiled and made his way to the front gate.

He was sitting on one of the red pillars when Zed finally arrived. He waved and Zed waved back.

“That’s some snazzy-looking iron armor you’re wearing, Doc,” he commented. Doc rolled his eyes, then remembered something.

“Wait, follow me,” he said. He began walking down the road. Zed followed him. He had remembered something that Zed had said some time ago about interdimensional travel.

“So, this is Area 77,” Zed mused. “I haven’t really been here much. I assume Scar built that?” he asked, pointing up at Captain Angry Eyes’s house.

“Yes,” Doc replied. “I don’t really want to talk about it, but this is Area 77. I don’t exactly remember what I was trying to do, since it wasn’t really me, if you get what I mean. But it’s a pretty cool place with lots of bad memories.”

“I see,” Zed answered. They continued along the path, through the tunnel and emerged on the other side of the captain’s house.

”So this is where my raid farm is going to be,” Doc said, motioning towards the towers of scaffolding and the giant circle in the sky. “It’s currently a work in progress.”

“I can see that,” Zed agreed. “So, what did you want me here for?”

“A while ago, you were asking about how you could make using nether portals, end portals and other portals smoother, were you not? And if there were other ways we could travel to different places via portals?” Dc asked.

“I was,” Zed replied. “How do you remember that?”

“That’s not the point,” Doc replied. “If you come over to this side of this chest monster, you’ll see this portal.”

He walked over the chest monster that Scar had left, , letting Zed take in the entirety of the cursed magnificence that was the Infinity Portal.

“What’s this?” Zed asked.

“This is the Infinity Portal. I haven’t run any tests on it because I'm terrified of it, but one day we could. If it’s a portal, it’s got to take us somewhere, and this could make for faster transport,” he explained.

“That’s smart,” Zed admitted. “I wouldn’t do anything about it right now. Perhaps after all this Demiser stuff blows over, we could test it while X makes sure we don’t go anywhere where we can’t return.”

“Exactly my thoughts,” Doc agreed.

“Is there anything else you’d like me to see?” Zed asked.

“Not exactly, but while you’re here, could you please help me with my raid farm? I kind of need someone to help me tell whether all this stuff lines up,” he explained. He didn’t really need someone else, but he had suddenly been hit by a bolt of inspiration.

“Sure!” Zed said.

Doc pointed to a spot next to the base of the centre tower of scaffolding. “I need you to stand there while I go to the top. I just need you to tell me whether we line up.”

“I can do that,” Zed replied. He proceeded to walk over to the place Doc had motioned to and stand there completely still.

Doc chuckled and began making his way up to the top. When he got there, he quietly placed an anvil down directly above Zed. “Okay, can you now punch the scaffolding?”

Zed did so before realizing what he was doing. He looked up to see an anvil rushing towards him.

Doc’s shout of “sorry, bro” was the last thing he heard before he died.

~~~

Someone shuffled his papers loudly while Grimdog sneezed.

“Why is this room so cold?” he complained.

The woman standing next to him scowled. “Because the real Stressmonster has this thing with ice and it fits in with what she would normally build.”

The someone was also known as the dead form of Xisuma. He cleared his throat. “If you have a problem with it, then why don’t you explain why you let that piece of scum named Docm77 get away, as well as grant him protection?”

“I’m the leader here,” Grimdog hissed.

“Only by title,” ‘X’ snapped.

“I was appointed leader by _him_ , so if you know what’s good for you, why don’t you shut up?” Grimdog snarled.

‘X’ settled for glaring at him through the green glass in his helmet with stormy eyes.

Grimdog rolled his eyes and turned to the rest of the group. “Do you have anything to report?”

The one pretending to be Zedaph rolled his eyes. “Yes. This look is ugly. Can I change myself?”

“No!” Grimdog and ‘Xisuma’ snarled simultaneously.

“I have a suggestion,” “Stress” piped up.

“What is it?” Grimdog asked.

“Well, if you feel like it, we could call each other by the name of the real hermit that we’re impersonating. This might help us get into act, and also, I’m tired of having to change names in my head every five seconds,” she suggested.

“Yeah, why not,” Grimdog agreed. “But I’m keeping Grimdog as a name.”

“Wait a minute,” said ‘Jevin’. “If the real you is known as Ren but his real name is Rendog, can we call you Grim?”

Grimdog rolled his eyes. “Anyway, who do you think we should go after next?”

“Oh, I heard that that scientist guy - Cub? - is doing these stunts. We could cause him to, you know, slip up, and die,” ‘Grian’ suggested.

“That’s smart,” ‘Scar’ agreed. “I’ll organize that along with X.”

“But I wanted to actually build a headquarters for us somewhere around here, you know, somewhere we can stay,” ‘X’ complained.

“Right, I wanted to make a giant mansion as well,” ‘Scar’ added. “Just not for all of us. Just me.”

“I think we can get someone else to build the headquarters. Perhaps the person who’s going to replace Cub? Scar, your personal project is personal, but your duties come first. Just show up at what’s going to be Cub’s final dare,” Grimdog ordered.

“Then it’s settled,” ‘X’ declared.

~~~

Tango was flying through Hermitland when he saw a giant pool of lava and a small amount of hermits gathered there

He saw Cub, who was still alive, and Scar and X, who were dead. He landed on the road beside them.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Mr Invincible’s doing another challenge,” Scar replied. “He’s going to jump off that scaffolding and bounce off those slime blocks in the lava.”

“I bet he’ll die,” X announced.

“He won’t,” Scar countered confidently. “He’s Mr Invincible.”

“What about you, Tango?” X asked.

“I think he’ll live,” he replied. “This challenge can’t possibly be special enough to kill him.”

“If you say so,” X sighed. “Look, here it starts.”

Tango looked up to see Cub ascending a tower of scaffolding. The sun had set, so it was nighttime, really emphasizing how bright the lava was.

Once Cub reached the top, he gave a shout and then jumped off.

Tango watched as Cub bounced off the first 4x4 square of slime, which then exploded and disappeared under the lava. He continued bouncing until he hesitated when he got up to the last one.

“Well, I am now stuck here forever,” he announced.

He wasn’t. Tango watched as X, in a last ditch effort to kill him, led a skeleton which had spawned in the dark over to the lava pit and released an arrow at Cub.

“No!” he heard himself yell, but Cub was soon engulfed by the flames and disappeared under the surface.

He soon respawned on the bed next to the pit of lava. “Ugh, I could’ve survived that, I just lost momentum when I hesitated!”

“How many diamonds do you want?” Tango asked X. “For winning the bet.”

“Oh, it’s fine. I don’t want any diamonds,” X replied.

“Well, I’ll be off then,” Tango said. He waved farewell and began the journey back to his base to sleep the night.

~~~

The next morning, he awoke and immediately began continuing his base. He had beeinspired by a few drawings he had found as well as the Hermitville dragon atop Grian’s base. He got out some resources and began outlining the shape of a dragon’s head on top of the blue tube.

When he sat down to take a break, he noticed someone peering at him from the other side of the tower. A certain dead cowboy, who was a bit grey. “Scar, if you’re going to stalk me, at least try to make it convincing.”

He heard Scar sniff. “I am convincing. You should try to be less perceptive.”

 _Whatever_. He rolled his eyes, took a swig from a water bottle and continued working.

~~~

“What is this?” Grian asked.

Iskall could barely hold back his laughter.

“What is this - what have you done, Iskall?” Grian asked again. “Are you serious? Did you actually put a dragon head on me? With Curse if Binding on it too? Well, I probably deserve it, but still!”

“Yep,” Iskall answered, smiling. Grian rolled his eyes. “What? Now we match!”

“Why did you place down that TNT, Iskall?” Grian asked suspiciously.

“To scare you into thinking that it had dispensed,” Iskall replied.

“Okay then. So what if we renovate this bunker, since the two of us who use it now have dragon heads? We’ll stick a head on Mumbo if we want him here,” Grian suggested.

“You can do that,” Iskall replied. “Imma head out now.”

“What?”

Iskall grinned and waved. “Bye!”

He left Grian in dumbfounded silence.

The builder touched his head. His head was now encased in scales, and the clasp at the back of his head did not seem to work. Iskall had tricked him well.

He still wanted to renovate the Architech bunker - which he now nicknamed the “Bro Cave” in his head - but he couldn’t help feeling the tiniest bit salty at Iskall for outsmarting him.

_Ah, well. You deserve it anyway._

He was thinking about ways he could make the Bro Cave more dragon themed, when he suddenly realized - if they were bros, and they both had dragon heads on, did that make them dragon bros?

He was struck by a bolt of inspiration and began taking out resources.Time to get to work.

~~~

“Come see,” he pleaded.

“What now?” Iskall asked.

”Come to the bunker!” Grian sang.

“I wasn’t not going to, but -” he began, but cut himself off after seeing Grian’s expression. “Okay, okay, I’ll come.”

The two of them jumped out of the window of the Sahara boardroom and made their way to the entrance of the Architech bunker. Iskall pressed the button and the two of them made their way down the corridor, throwing their keycard into the hopper and jumping in the tunnel on the right.

They emerged in the first room of the bunker. Grian rushed ahead and skipped down the stairs. Iskall followed him.

“Are you kidding me?” he asked. “A dragon head? That’s it?”

“Uh, yeah,” Grian admitted. But that’s not all. If you come inside this magnificent dragon head, you’ll find a lovely inner chamber where we can scheme!”

He beckoned to Iskall, who followed him in stepping on a pressure plate to open the door. He could already see ten different ways this could be trapped in the future.

“So inside here,” Ggrian explained, “is a place where we can sit and talk. I think it’s a bit empty, so I’m going to stick dragon heads on more people. See you!”

Before Iskall had the time to register it, he had bolted away.

“So you’re just going to leave me here?” he asked, not that Grian could hear him. He sighed.

The Grian in question was making his way to New New Hermitville. He had just the hermit in mind to make the newest dragon bro - Bdubs.

He knew of where Bdubs lived - a diorite castle. He had not seen the castle since its early stages of construction, but as he saw it now, it was beautiful. Almost so beautiful that he wanted to rip a chunk off it and give it to Iskall.

He landed on a hill that overlooked New New Hermitville. He set up a dispenser on top of a cobblestone wall with a curse of binding dragon head inside. Now he just had to find Bdubs.

<Grian> hey bdubs

<Grian> are you there

<BdoubleO100> what are you doing outside my house

Grian looked up to see Bdubs peering suspiciously from a window.

<Grian> i’ve got something to show you

<Grian> come on, man

<BdoubleO100> fine

<BdoubleO100> if i die, it’s your fault and i demand payment

<Grian> okay, okay

He watched as Bdubs disappeared from the window and landed next to him a few minutes later after ender pearling there.

“What do you want?” he asked crossly.

“I need you to look inside this dispenser,” Grian answered.

“Really. Well, I can do that,” Bdubs stated. He moved to stand directly in front of the dispenser and squinted at it. “What do I do now?”

Grian flicked the lever and watched, amused, as Bdubs flinched back, clawing at his face.

“What is this, Grian?” he asked dangerously.

“Just a dragon head,” he answered.

Bdubs reached to unclasp the mask but found that he couldn’t. “Does this have curse of binding on it?”

“Yep!”

He sighed. “I should’ve guessed. At least it wasn’t a pumpkin.”

“I kind of need you to come over to Sahara, to-” Grian began.

“Why? I am a proud member of Idea. I don’t need your Sahara advertising,” Bdubs snapped.

‘It’s not about that. You’re a dragon bro now, so you need to come to the bro cave,” Grian explained.

“Okay!”

The two of them took to the sky, leaving the dispenser set-up on the hill.

~~~

Tango stepped closer to the portal. He could hear ticking, almost as if a tripwire had been activated.

“Something’s afoot,” he muttered under his breath. The ticking sound was coming from his nether portal, and he knew that nether portals didn’t usually make that sound.

He didn’t want to go near it, though. Something told him that this was the work of one of those dead people. Well, just one dead person - Cubfan.

He had received a few visits from the dead hermits recently, and they were all black, white and grey. Apart from the visit from Scar, he had also seen Cub twice, Jevin once, X once and another Scar just a few hours ago.

He didn’t understand why they were killing off the still-alive people when the rulebook explicitly stated that the dead were not to touch the alive. He also didn’t understand why Grian didn’t care, or even seem to notice.

He peered closely at his portal and he could see the faint outline of a piece of string along the top.

“Oh. Ohhh. OHHHH. Someone’s trying to trap me, are they? Well, it didn’t work,” he said out loud. “They’d better try again, _Cub_.”

It wasn’t like he was brave enough to take down the trap. He needed to call for backups. He needed to call Impulse.

<Tango> dude

<Tango> impulse

<Tango> we need to chat!

<Tango> NOW

_He’s going to think I’m mad at him or something._

<impulseSV> oh … ok … i’m in the nether hub … too scared to go through any portals :(

<impulseSV> can you meet me here?

<Tango> uh … yeah. Can’t use MY portal through … brt

He put his communicator back in one of his pockets and got his rockets out. It was time to find a portal that wasn’t ten thousand blocks away but also wasn’t trapped.

He flew north first, in the direction of the mob farm. He believed that the portal there was hardly ever used, and also north enough that no-one ever thought of trapping it due to never being used. He went through, fire resistance potion in hand, and arrived in the nether, safe and alive.

He made his way down the ice track, being careful not to fall off. He made his way to the nether hub, where Impulse was waiting for him.

“Hey, man!” he greeted Impulse.

“Okay. This is nuts. This is absolutely nuts,” Impulse stated. Tango couldn’t help but laugh. Perhaps the panic had finally taken over his brain.

“So I was at my base, and there were clickies. Clickies everywhere. There’s clickies, and traps, and my portal has got a little string hanging in front of it,” he explained.

“Oh man, I’ve - I’ve been in this nether hub for about an hour, because I was too scared to go through the portals. There’s dispensers sticking out of portals - I got shot by one,” Impulse said. “There’s potions, and arrows and stuff.”

Tango approached a nether portal but then thought better of it. “What I don’t get is that - these traps are clearly made by the people who have already died, but the rulebook forbids that! What I don’t get is why Grian, who created the game, hasn’t said anything yet.”

“You haven’t heard?” Impulse asked.

“Heard what?”

Impulse lowered his voice. “X has been doing some research, and he believes that whoever made Demise wasn’t actually Grian, but someone else pretending to be Grian.”

“Who, then?” Tango asked skeptically.

“No, you’re thinking of the hermits. He thinks that whoever did this isn’t a hermit, but an enemy we don’t know about, which also aligns with the theory of whoever was controlling Doc,” Impulse corrected. “Which sounds like it could be correct, but I don’t want to believe that.”

“Huh. That sounds interesting,” Tango remarked. “Well, we can think about that later. We have traps to defuse!”

“What?”

“Follow me,” he said. He flew up and into the north nether tunnel, turning left to get to the mob farm portal, being the only portal he knew that was safe.

They arrived at his base a few minutes later.

“So what are we doing?” Impulse asked again. He had been asking that particular question practically non-stop.

“We, my dear friend,” Tango began as they flew into the underground part of his base, “are going to form Impulse and Tango’s Safety Bomb Squad and we are going to save Hermitcraft from traps and the like.”

“ITSBS,” Impulse echoed. “It’s BS.”

“Gee, thanks a lot,” Tango said. “Oh wait, that’s the acronym. Never mind. So we’re going to become professional bomb defusers and protect our friends from evil!”

“Really,” Impulse mumbled. “So what do we do?”

“We go find traps and we disassemble them! Simple!” Tango answered brightly. “Between the two of us, I think that we’re qualified enough. I enjoy blowing things up -”

“And I’m the reigning champion of the How To Kill A Tango contest,” Impulse finished. “Right.”

“Right!” Tango agreed, then walked to one of his shulker boxes and pulled out a set of clothes. “Do you have a professional Impulse bomb defuser uniform on your person right now?”

“You shouldn’t assume that,” Impulse scolded. “Well, I do, but most people wouldn’t. “

He reached for the ender chest, but Tango swatted him away.

“Meet outside iTrade in thirty minutes.”

~~~

The two adventurers, now heroes in their own minds, defused bombs, disassembled traps, and made the world a better place.

But all good things must come to an end, and all good kings die.

Which was when Tango, after announcing that ITSBS could take a break, decided to take a trip to the DERP mall and bring Impulse with him.

The two of them quietly entered the diamond shape that was the entrance to the mall and went down the bubble column elevators.

They emerged soaking wet but Tango did not stop. He had places to be.

“Tango,” said Impulse. “I don’t like this place. It feels haunted. Plus, if it’s trapped, we have no way of flying out.”

“Oh, relax,” Tango said. “We’re ITSBS! We can easily take on any trap that comes our way. Don’t be so worried, Impulse! This is our time to relax!”

They were standing in the middle of the walkway of where the four bubble columns began. Tango jumped off the walkway and flew in the general direction of the upper floor of the orange section. Impulse followed him.

“So there’s this place that opened up recently. It’s right here, and I think it sells Demise-related stuff,” Tango explained. He opened a few chests. “See, here’s some potions, and some armor.”

“So it’s basically the opposite of the shop that you opened on the other side of the mall,” Impulse clarified.

“Yup!” Tango approached the lectern at the center of the back wall and opened the book. “Ha ha ha … what?”

He let out a little scream as the carpet underneath them dropped away, revealing a chamber lined with obsidian. TNT fell from dispensers on the wall.

“WHAT?” Impulse shouted. The two of them scrambled for any time of cover, but the TNT was too distracting, and their hands were sweaty, and rockets slipped from their grips.

impulseSV blew up

Tango blew up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Frickity frack, that was a long chapter. This took me three days to write.


	6. And so they investigated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the main characters actually get stuff done.

“Jellie, stay here and don’t move,” Scar instructed. Jellie simply stared at him. “Okay, whatever. I’ll be back soon, I promise. I’m just going to visit my dead friends.”

Jellie gave him a look that said “I’m seriously starting to doubt your sanity” but he decided to ignore this and stepped into the portal.

He made his way to the nether hub. He wanted to talk to Tango, since he had heard that the explosion in the DERP mall had not only destroyed Tango and Impulse’s items, but had damaged their pride as well. Or maybe that was just the excuse he made up to have a talk with someone. Isolating himself while working at Cherry was quite lonely.

He assumed that Tango had removed the trap from his portal, so he went through without a second thought. He emerged in Tango’s storage room, where the hermit in question was punching a shulker box.

“Oh, hey, Scar,” he said. “Why are you here?”

“Just wanted to come check up on you,” Scar replied. “Why do you ask?”

“Check up on me? Weren’t you here just yesterday?” Tango asked.

“Haha, what? I haven’t been in the fantasy district since a month ago when I visited with False,” Scar said. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I remember clearly that you’ve been here twice in the last week, apart from this time. The first time was the morning after Cub’s death.” He looked at Scar suspiciously. “You’re not pulling a prank on me, are you?”

“Wait, Cub’s dead?” Scar asked.

“Yeah, you were there when he did his final challenge,” Tango replied. “What? You don’t have amnesia, do you?”

“I don’t,” Scar answered immediately. “I can recall everything that’s happened in the last week. I’ve been nowhere except the Cherry factory, Hermitville, Falsewell, the shopping district and now here. Bro, you okay?”

“I’m very sure that I’m okay.” Tango took out an axe and broke a few chests. “Well, the you that visited me was the dead you, but -”

“Wait, hol’ up,” Scar interrupted. “The dead me? I’m very much alive. There is no dead me.”

“Are you sure? The you that visited me had torn clothes and was very grey,” Tango explained. “Was that not you? Oh, wait -”

“What?”

“Impulse said something about this. When we met to form the ITSBS, he said that X had a theory that Grian didn’t actually make Demise, it was someone, not a hermit, pretending to be him. This could mean that who I saw wasn’t you, but someone pretending to be you,” he elaborated.

“Oh dear,” Scar mumbled. “This is bad.”

“You don’t say,” he heard Tango mutter under his breath.

“Well, this means that I’m going to go to Hermitville now. See if I can find anything else,” Scar informed him.

“I would say to go to the Halloween district instead, I’d assume that because Demise is Halloween themed, there might be more activity there,” Tango suggested. “I would go myself, but I’m too busy.”

“Punching chests and shulker boxes, I can see,” Scar joked. “Okay, bye!”

He stepped through the portal again. He believed that the Halloween district was accessible via the east tunnel, so he went in that direction. Sure enough, after a few hundred blocks, there was another tunnel leading off the main one, saying “Halloween district”. He went along that one, painfully aware of the dangers of the nether through the glass.

He went through the portal and arrived in the skull made of quartz that he remembered from Halloween last year. He immediately registered a giant floating mansion above the phantom statue from the phantom hunt last year.

_ Oh, my word. What is that? _

He stepped around the skull to see another mansion, this time very much on the ground, on the left side of the portal, and what seemed to be a small town on the other side of a pumpkin patch on the right side.

The floating mansion looked quite nice, actually, and it reminded him of what X would normally build. The mansion on the left definitely reminded him of himself and what he would build. He remembered the town from last year during Halloween, but it had just been a graveyard and a church, built by Joe Hills. Now, he could see at least three buildings, as well as a heart bade of TNT.

_ X needs to hear about this. _

He pulled out his communicator, typing like he had never typed before in his life.

<GoodTimeWithScar> X

<GoodTimeWithScar> HAVE YOU BEEN IN THE HALLOWEEN DISTRICT RECENTLY

<Xisuma> No, why do you ask?

<GoodTimeWithScar> YOU NEED TO COME

<Xisuma> Okay, as long as you stop using caps lock.

Scar rolled his eyes.

<GoodTimeWithScar> okay, come on!

Now all he had to do was wait until X came over. Which wasn’t long, since X was, among other things, quite responsible and punctual.

“Holy crap,” Scar heard X breathe as he saw everything that had happened in the Halloween district. “What happened here?”

“I have no idea, but it proves your theory correct,” Scar replied. “No hermit did this.”

He pointed at the floating mansion. “That looks like what you built, but you obviously didn’t build that.”

“Why didn’t I think of coming here, of all places?” X moaned.

“It’s okay, everybody derps sometimes,” Scar comforted him.

“Not as much as me,” X complained.

“What do we do now?” Scar asked expectantly.

X fell silent. “I’d say, because we know that we’re not the only ones here but we don’t know much about these new people, spy on them. Know why they’re here and what they want. Should I be more worried? Probably. Why am I not more worried?”

“Probably because you’re in shock,” Scar replied. “Don’t worry, I am too!”

“This doesn’t debunk the mind-control theory though,” X said. “Although I’d rather believe that the pretenders are the same people who controlled Doc. I’m not prepared to think about having two different enemies.”

“This does put Grian in the clear - we can trust him now,” Scar realized. X shook his head.

“Not entirely. Grian’s been away from civilization an awful lot recently, and until we can make sure that what he was doing while he was away was a hundred percent trustworthy, we should steer clear of him.”

“Oh dear,” said Scar. “Should we go find him right now?”

“How do we know if it’s the real him?” X wondered.

“We’ll try, and if it’s not, we’ll find the real one afterwards,” Scar decided. “He should be around Hermitville somewhere. I heard that he’s been around NNH recently.”

“Why?” X asked. “I mean, I knew that from watching his patterns, but why? I don’t think he’s that good friends with Keralis or Bdubs.”

“Why are you asking me? What I say is that we head there now and question him,” Scar announced, sticking a hand out.

X shook his hand. “Okay.”

The two of them went back in the portal.

Minutes later, they were flying towards the bases of Keralis and Bdubs. Scar scanned the surroundings for any sign of the red-clad builder. There was no sign -  _ aha _ .

Grian was crouching in a field towards the right side of NNH from where Scar was. The field was still left of the two wheat patches, but still on the right side.

He and X landed directly in front of Grian.

“Hi, G,” he said.

“Who are you?” X asked.

“What?” Grian asked. “I’m Grian. Why do you ask? You haven’t lost your memories, have you?”

“Don’t try to act so innocent with me, whoever you are,” X growled. “Who are you, and where is the real Grian?”

Scar watched from the side as Grian stood up and put a hand on X’s shoulder. “Dude, are you okay? I’m Grian. I don’t know what you’ve been smoking recently, but I’m me.”

He wasn’t the real Grian, but X didn’t need to know that. He flinched backwards as he saw the anger flash in X’s eyes. “Don’t lie to me, you piece of crap. Who are you, and why did you make Demise?”

“I didn’t make Demise,” the fake Grian lied. He was good at acting, he knew that - he had to, in order to pretend to be people he was not. “Are you okay? People have been telling me that for a long time, but I don’t know why - I didn’t make Demise.”

He saw X take out his communicator. “Texting while in a conversation? How rude.”

He peered at the screen.

<Xisuma> Scar, record

<Xisuma> I’m going to fight him.

“Wait, what?” he asked, before X drew out his sword.

“If you are the real Grian, then tell me what you’ve been doing so far away from the island,” he hissed.

_ Away from the island? I don’t seem to recall knowing what exactly the real Grian was doing _ . “I … can’t tell you that.”

“And why is that?” X asked. He didn’t reply. “If you don’t speak, then I will have no choice but to kill you and exile you.”

_ Crap. I can’t let that happen. I don’t respawn like them. If I die, I die forever. _

He glared at X without speaking, and as quickly as possible, turned into a footprint.

He hated being a footprint. Perhaps it was the fact that he was a 2D shape when he was a footprint, but also he felt very flat. He much preferred being a humanoid creature.

“Where did he go?” he heard Scar ask.

“I think he ender pearled away, or just ran really fast,” X answered. “This means that something was wrong.”

“If he’s so keen on pretending to be two people, then we could always call him to meet somewhere else - say, Falsewell - and question him again,” Scar suggested.

“That seems like a good idea. Let’s go,” X said.

That was the last ‘Grian’ heard of their conversation. He heard firework rockets and then silence. As soon as he was sure that they were gone, he turned back into Grian. He flinched heavily. It hurt like hell every time he changed forms, but that was just the way life was.  _ It’s for the greater good. _

~~~

Scar sat nervously on a chair in the diner in Falsewell. X had sent an invitation to Grian, asking him to come over to the diner, and now they were waiting for him to come.

He did sort of regret coming up with that solution. He believed in the best of Grian, and he didn’t really think that the person that they had just met was Grian. He was confused as to what to think, so he decided to just think whatever X thought.

It was a mere three minutes before Grian opened the door and stepped inside the diner. Scar and X were waiting for him.

“So,” X began. “What just happened?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is a mega chapter, lengthwise and also amount-of-stuff-that-happened-wise.
> 
> I found out that my friend dislikes Stress because she says "get gorgeous" too much. I told her that it was Iskall who came up with the campaign slogan. She doesn't care. I've decided to make Stress and 'Stress' even mainer characters than they were before.


	7. And so Grians are interrogated, bros are bro'd, and more people die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the real X is kinda mean, Scar does something, dragon heads are the cause of two hermits' grief and the undead die again.

Grian was very confused. “What?”

“Still playing this game? Fine,” X spat. “Then explain to me why you created Demise.”

“This _again_?” Grian asked. “Why does _everybody_ think that I created Demise? I’ve told everyone a million times that I didn’t!”

“Perhaps it’s because you actually did, and you’re a terrible liar,” X snapped.

“I _didn’t_ ,” Grian insisted.

“Um, X, he might be telling the truth here,” Scar piped up.

“Don’t say that you believe him now,” X spat. Scar shrank backwards.

“Don’t talk to Scar that way,” Grian snapped. “Well, don’t talk to me that way, either, but Scar doesn’t deserve to be yelled at.”

“Oh, shut up,” X ordered. “You have no right to tell me what to do, you impostor.”

“I am not an imposter, I am Grian,” Grian insisted. “I didn’t create Demise, now if you don’t mind, I have places I want to be.”

He stood up from his chair but X put a hand on his shoulder menacingly. “Grian, if you keep on running away, we’ll have no choice but to exile you.”

~~~

“Hey, guys,” said ‘Tango’ brightly as he entered the meeting room in Stress’s crypt.

“Well look who finally decided to show up,” Grimdog snapped. “Took you long enough.”

“Oh, don’t be such a party pooper, _Grim_ ,” ‘Tango’ laughed.

“Sit down,” ‘X’ ordered.

“Wow, right to business today, I see,” ‘Tango’ observed. He sat down on the floor. “So, what have I missed?”

“The deadquarters have been built,” ‘X’ reported.

“We can _see_ that,” Grimdog snapped.

“Woah, someone’s cranky,” ‘Impulse’ muttered. “So, what can we do with the building?”

‘Cub’ cleared his throat. Everybody turned to look at him. “Tango - the one standing in the room right now - and I have been discussing this, and we’ve come up with an idea. If we can bait some of the hermits into coming into the deadquarters with the promise of the knowledge of the locations of all the traps, then I guarantee that if we place traps, at least one hermit will die from it.”

“How can you be so sure?” Grimdog asked.

“What do you think? Do you think that the hermits could possibly outsmart us?” ‘Cub’ demanded.

“Calm down, Ja- I mean, Cub,” Grimdog corrected himself as ‘Cub’ glared at him. “I do not doubt your abilities for a second, but the hermits are on edge, and might be a bit more cautious than normal.”

“Also,” ‘Scar’ interrupted, “I heard from Grian just then that the real Scar and the admin guy are onto us.”

“And you didn’t think to tell us earlier?” Grimdog barked. “Seriously?”

“We can’t worry now,” ‘X’ interjected. “We have to keep moving in an attempt to keep them from investigating much further. And Cub’s plan might just work. From what I hear, the real Shashwammy -”

“Shashwammy?” Grimdog asked incredulously. “It’s pronounced _ih-zoom-ah_ , you fool.”

“Well, Keralis calls him _Shashwammy_ , and you never told me the correct pronunciation, so you’re the fool,” ‘X’ spat.

“To keep on topic, Cub, the one standing in the room right now, has come up with a plan to trap every chunk of land there is to trap, giving the hermits to choice but to attempt the journey to the top floor of the deadquarters. At the very top of the building I will prepare a book listing the locations of all the traps,” ‘Tango’ explained.

“Why on earth would you do that? Giving them free information?” Grimdog asked.

“Keep in mind that they’ll most likely die in the process, allowing us to take their places, and if they do actually reach the top, we will remove all of those traps and install new ones, while making them grow cocky,” ‘Tango’ replied.

“Sounds good to me,” ‘X’ remarked.

“Okay. Get to work,” Grimdog ordered.

~~~

“You would exile me for just an instinct?” he asked.

“It’s not “just an instinct”,” X snapped. “I have proof!”

“Of what?” Grian asked. X fell silent. “You don’t even know what your proof is about - not that you have any, because there is no proof to have!”

“Grian,” X began. “I know that you’re either an amazing trickster, or you’re mind-controlled, like Doc.”

“Or he could not be Grian at all,” Scar piped up. “Okay, I’ll shut up now.”

“You’ve been pretending to be two people for a while now,” X continued.

“What?” Grian asked.

“What have you been doing tens of thousands of blocks away from the main island?” X asked..

Scar looked from person to person. He didn’t know what to do - he believed that Grian was innocent, at least from whatever X was accusing him of (he hadn’t figured that out yet) - and all he could do, in fact, was sit there while two of his best friends argued.

He was getting reminded of Area 77 again. He had been unable to do anything while Doc and the hippies argued, and it seemed as if he was unable to do anything here either.

_Why am I even here?_

“I’ve been - I’ve been building a birthday present for Ren!” Grian hissed.

“Birthday present, my ass! Ren’s birthday was in mid October!” Xisuma countered.

“I’m not sure if you heard, but we were a little busy worrying about Doc and Scar at that time, while also getting Demise started. And I’m not sure if you noticed, but I was already away once Demise started - I was gone a day after the fight,” Grian argued.

“See, I would believe you, if that made sense,” X said.

“But it _does_ make sense,” Grian snapped.

_What am I doing here?_

~~~

Mumbo peered through the iron bars at the fidget spinner that was Jevin’s base. He had heard about the amazingly terrifying feats of Jevin the Dead, and he was very worried. A hundred diamond blocks were on the line, and he was right next to one of the most dangerous dead hermits.

But not the most dangerous, of course. That title went to Cubfan for sure. He had not only heard about, but seen, the ruthless traps and the vex-like wings that Cub now possessed.

The coverage of False’s base with buttons and Bdubs’s castle with pressure plates by Jevin looked pathetic next to it.

But still, he was nervous - who wouldn’t be?

Which was why he had decided to abandon his bunker and move to his witch farm.

Which was possibly even more dangerous than his bunker. Not many people knew of his bunker, and if they did, they didn’t take it seriously. His industrial area, however, was a very populated area where anybody could come and find and trap. Not to mention the witches.

He was going to do it anyway, to put his mind at ease.

Its location several thousand blocks away from his base was a bad, as well as the amount of lava and dangerous mobs around. There were quite a few bads about his witch farm, but he didn’t let it bother him.

He flew back to his base, then took the nether to the top nether tunnels, where he then took a ladder downwards to get to the path towards his witch farm. He continued along the stone brick path, dodging the lava stream, until he got to the minecart track that led towards his industrial area.

Now, Mumbo wasn’t stupid. He was a spoon, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew that there was a good chance that somebody had trapped the minecart rail, so of course he wasn’t going to use it. Instead, he decided to fly through the tunnel to get to his witch farm.

He launched into flight mode, speeding along the corridor, baniging his head on the ceiling every two seconds. Once he got to the open area where there were ghasts shooting at him and thick, uncomfortable nether air, he sped up.

He got to his witch farm in a record time of one minute and forty two seconds.

He wasn’t just going to hang around the area, though. He was going to build another bunker, this time simply one where he could chill and relax, with a totally safe combination lock. He already had the design of the combination lock memorized. All he had to do now was to build it.

~~~

“No, it doesn’t make sense, and you know that!” X shouted. “Stop trying to confuse me with words!”

“I’m not trying to -ugh! X, why are you so damn suspicious?” Grian asked. “You know me! There might be someone pretending to be me, but it’s not me! I’m the real me!”

“Shut up!” X barked. “I know that you’re either not the real Grian or you are and were always tricking us! You know what? I’m just going to exile you, right now.”

“What?” Scar snapped to attention. _I can do something. I_ need _to do something._ “X, think about what you’re doing? Why are you doubting Grian, of all people?”

“Scar, can’t you tell that he’s a danger to all of us? We can’t trust him anymore, and so we need to get rid of him,” X pleaded.

“We can trust him,” Scar insisted. “You’ve known him for over a year, and he hasn’t done anything bad, not even now - you haven’t seen him do anything, have you? He’s our friend.”

“He could be mind-controlled,” X pointed out.

“Like Doc was, and remember how bad you felt after you almost exiled him?” Scar asked. “If he was, which I don’t believe he is, you can’t just exile him.”

He looked over at Grian, who was now drumming his fingers on the table. He turned back to X. “Come on, X. Please don’t exile him. He’s our friend.”

He could practically hear X grinding his teeth through the helmet. “ _Fine_. He and I will sort this out later.”

X shot a glare full of venom at Grian, who was now sitting awkwardly and humming. He then strode out of the room.

Scar looked expectantly at Grian, who opened his mouth and said, “I am shooketh.”

Scar snickered.

“Thanks a lot, Scar,” Grian continued. “For defending me. And not letting me get exiled, even though you don’t know that I’m innocent.”

“But I don’t know that you’re guilty, either,” Scar replied. “And I won’t just sit down and let my friend get taken control of like that - again.”

Grian nodded. “Okay, I’m now going to head back to my bros. See you!”

Scar blinked as Grian skipped out of the door.

“Bye,” he said, though no-one could hear him.

~~~

“Oh, my gosh,” said Iskall.

“That’s very alarming,” said Bdubs.

“Yeah,” Grian agreed.

“What do we do now?” Bdubs asked.

“Well, I’m not well informed on what they actually thought I did, apart from start Demise, so we have to find someone who does know,” Grian decided.

“Wait a moment …” Iskall interrupted. “How do we know that you’re the real Grian?”

“Uh, because I act like me and I am me and you should be able to recognize me, Iskall, I thought we were friends -”

“Okay, okay,” Iskall said. “So anyways, when you were not here and there was a fake Grian on the loose, he hung around Mumbo a lot, so I was thinking -”

“Oh my goodness, Iskall, you are a genius! We’ll induct Mumbo into the Bros and brainwash him into telling us everything that he knows!” Grian declared.

“Actually, I -” Bdubs began.

“And Bdubs hasn’t had an official initiation yet, so we’ll get him to bro Mumbo! Excellent plan!” Grian grinned. “I knew you two wouldn’t disappoint me!”

“I was actually thinking of something along the lines of _asking him nicely_ ,” Iskall clarified.

“That works too!” Grian said.

“Do I have to come?” Bdubs asked.

“Yes,” Iskall and Grian barked at the same time.

Bdubs groaned.

~~~

Mumbo was reading a book.

Not the book you’re thinking of- the one that Iskall had written called _Imfalse_. Oh no. This book, the one he was reading, was much more sophisticated than that.

He was reading _An Expert’s Guide To Large-Scale Farms_ by Ilmango.

He had borrowed it from the rare literature part of the library. He traced along the outline of the illustration that the author had included of one of his own witch farms. It was massive, at least nine times the size of Mumbo’s and much more efficient.

 _I wish I had the time and skill to build a quadruple witch farm like that_ , he thought longingly.

He settled back further on his chair and took a sip from his teacup.

He was way too scared to go outside. He had received a book from Cub a few days ago telling him that he had ‘bet’ on Mumbo to win Demise. He had also seen Cub and Scar, both greyed out, visit his farm and wordlessly watch him build stuff. Needless to say, he was terrified.

Which was why he was pretending to have a holiday while drinking tea inside his bunker.

The words on the page swam in and out of focus and he blinked hard to keep them in the same place.

 _Oh. I’m tired_ , he realized. _I should probably get some sleep. But who knows what could happen while I’m asleep? The dead hermits will come after me._

His internal debate was interrupted by his head drooping forwards and him falling fast asleep.

~~~

“Where is he?” Bdubs asked. “Do you think he’s in that bunker?”

“What bunker?” Grian asked. His head snapped around to see a box of iron and concrete underneath Mumbo’s iron farm. “Oh, that bunker. Probably.”

“Let’s goooo!” Iskall shouted. He jumped off the platform above the witch farm.

“Shut up!” Bdubs hissed.

The three of them snuck to the front, where there was a wall of nine buttons.

“Great, there’s a combination lock,” Grian sighed. “What could the key be?”

He pressed the first four buttons, and to his surprise, the door to the bunker opened. They peered inside to see Mumbo sleeping on a chair with a book in his lap.

“Oh my god, is that _An Expert’s Guide To Large-Scale Farms_?” Iskall asked.

“Shush!” Grian scolded. He placed a dispenser behind Mumbo’s head and put a dragon head inside. Bdubs flicked the lever and Mumbo’s moustached face was no more. Instead, he now had a dragon head.

“He’s very deeply sleeping, isn’t he?” Iskall remarked. “If that’s the case, I’m just going to pinch this book and we’re going to make an exit.”

He retrieved the book from Mumbo‘s grasp.

The three dragon bros exited the bunker and returned to their own bunker beneath Sahara.

~~~

When Mumbo woke up, he immediately knew that something was wrong.

Firstly, there was something around his head. He knew that it was a dragon head - he knew that Grian and Iskall had been coming for him, and it seemed that they had struck.

But more importantly, his copy of _And Expert’s Guide To Large-Scale Farms_ was gone! He had noticed that he was in his hands just before he had fallen asleep.

 _No. They stole it_ , he realized. Grian and Iskall had stolen his book! It wasn’t even his book, it was a public book, but he was still angry!

“Ughmphrrrrrrrughhhhh,” he said. “It’s gone!”

He sat on the floor of his bunker, hugging his knees.

A few hours passed and he heard voices outside. He could clearly tell that it was Grian and Iskall.

“What do you want?” he barked.

“Hey, Mumbo,” Iskall greeted him through the wall. “How are you?”

“Terrible, no thanks to you,” he muttered.

“Don’t be so sad, Mumbo,” Grian scolded. “Come on, you’re a bro now! We’ll show you around the bunker. It’s been renovated.”

“Not until you give me back my book,” Mumbo demanded.

“Firstly, it’s not your book, and secondly, Bdubs has it now,” Iskall replied.

“Bdubs” Mumbo asked. “Why Bdubs?”

“Oh, you haven’t heard?” Iskall asked. “He’s a bro now.”

“Fine, right, whatever,” Mumbo sighed.

“You’re coming with us, Mumbo,” Grian declared.

“Come on, man,” Iskall said.

Mumbo rolled his eyes. “Fine.”

“Yay!” said Grian as the three of them went up to the nether portal, went through, traversed through the nether and arrived in Sahara. They then entered the bro cave, where Bdubs was waiting for them.

“Wh-what’s going on?” Mumbo asked.

“Don’t worry, Mumbo,” Bdubs instructed with an evil grin. “Just sit on that chair and everything’s going to be fine.”

~~~

An hour later, Mumbo was shaking his head, confused as to what the hell was going on.

“Basically, you’re now a bro,” Grian finished.

“Yes, I got that,” Mumbo replied, exasperated. “Is there anything else I need to know?”

“Not really,” Bdubs answered.

“Then couldn’t you have just told me that I was a bro, whatever that means, instead of telling me your life stories?” he asked.

“Nope,” Grian grinned.

He rolled his eyes. “I thought as much. So as Bros what do we _do_?”

“We can’t tell you that yet,” Iskall informed him mournfully. “First, you need to go through your initiation.”

“Initiation?” Mumbo echoed.

“You need to bro someone else,” Grian explained. “Broing you was Bdubs’s initiation.”

“Who, then?” Mumbo asked.

“FalseSymmetry,” the other bros said in unison.

“Are you for real? False is going to kill me,” he said.

“Don’t worry, you won’t do it alone,” Iskall assured him. “Grian and I will be with you. Bdubs has other responsibilities.”

“This means two new Bros in a day!” Grian remarked happily.

“I’ll see you guys later, then,” Bdubs said. He waved as he activated his elytra and flew up the stairs and exited the bunker.

“Let’s go!” said Iskall. And so the three remaining bros left the bro cave, armed with nothing but their wits and their swords and whatever was in the shulker box that Grian was carrying, and flew off towards the purple lands of False Symmetry.

As they flew through the sky above the bay, Mumbo couldn’t help but feel a bit worried. Perhaps things were going _too_ smoothly. He was a bit suspicious of everything that had happened.

They landed on the top purple loop of the main tower in False’s base.

“What do we do?” Mumbo asked.

“”I’ve got a plan,” Grian announced. “We fly down there, put a few signs on a wall telling her to put on a pumpkin hat, and while she takes her helmet off, we quickly put down a dispenser and give her a dragon head.”

“Uh,” Mumbo said. “I don’t think that’s going to work.

“Oh, calm down, Mumbo! Everything’s going to go perfectly! Stop being such a worrywart!” Grian scolded. Mumbo refrained from reply and instead peered over the edge.

The three of them flew down into the bottomest part of False’s base, where there was a pool of water in the middle. There seemed to be four wings branching out from the middle.

Grian placed down a shulker box and took out a few invisibility potions. “Be quiet, and don’t drink these yet.”

He passed them to Mumbo and Iskall. He then took out some birch planks and signs and made a board and hung the pumpkin from it. Mumbo couldn’t really tell what the signs said, but from what he could see, and knowing Grian, it was just a bunch of nonsense.

“Mumbo, hold the button,” Grian instructed. “Iskall, hold the dragon head and be prepared to put it inside the dispenser that I will be placing next to her.”

“What do we do now?” Iskall asked, taking the dragon head.

“We wait for False to come. The sign’s pretty hard to miss. We chug our potions and place everything in place, and Mumbo then presses the button. Boom. A new bro.”

“But she’s a girl,” Iskall pointed out. “Doesn’t that mean she’ll be a sis, not a bro?”

“You don’t need to be a dude to be a bro,” Grian said icily.

Iskall lapsed back into silence. The three Architechs sat in the chilly basement of False’s base before they heard elytra flapping and rockets.

Mumbo turned to see False landing in front of the board. He quickly drank the invisibility potion and grabbed the button. He watched as False read the signs, and raised her hands to take off her helmet.

In a flash, Grian was behind her, without a invisibility potion, and had placed a dispenser behind her. Mumbo placed the button on the side, aware that he was still wearing armor and had a dragon head on so he was the least invisible thing in the history of mankind and Iskall placed the head inside. Mumbo pressed the button before realizing that False had already put on the pumpkin.

“What’s going on?” he heard False ask. She was taking her pumpkin head off to have a better look at them, so he slapped the button as hard as he could, and False was now wearing a dragon head.

“Yes!” Grian shrieked. Mumbo stepped back to watch Grian bowed deeply to False and without a word flew upwards and away. Iskall followed him, so Mumbo copied the both of them.

“Mumbo, what’s going on?” False asked him before he could fly off. He shrugged and followed his Architech bros.

~~~

The next day, False was quite well-informed about the dragon bros. She had hunted down Bdubs in the night and forced him to give her information on swordpoint. The two of them were now standing in front of the Sahara diamonds pile, where Grian was waiting for them.

“Oh, my dear Bdubs,“ he cried. “What has False done to you know?”

Bdubs wiped dry blood from his forehead. “I’m leaving now,” he mumbled.

“Go see if you can find Stress,” Grian suggested. “Get some healing done.”

False watched as he clapped Bdubs on the back, the latter who then flew away. Grian turned to False with a forced smile on his face. “Now, why don’t we head on down?”

“Don’t try to act all innocent with me,” she growled, her hand resting on the hilt of her sword.Grian smiled and flapped his arms.

“Don’t be so mean, Falsie,” he soothed. “Us bros, we don’t like violence. We simply bro. Follow me.”

False watched, unimpressed, as Grian pressed a button on the side of the box. “Don’t tell me, this is just a decoy and it’s going to kill anyone who goes through?”

“Almost correct,” Grian answered. “Follow me through this path - wait, what?”

False peered in the tunnel that had opened up and saw that there were redstone particles on the carpet. “So I was right.”

“No, this isn’t meant to be here,” Grian explained. He took the carpet off to see redstone ore, and the carpets on the other side revealed lava. “Oh dear.”

He covered the lava up with some stone and continued along the path. The path ended in a small 3 by 3 room where there were two holes, one a bubble elevator and one not. False walked over to see that there was water at the bottom of the non-bubble elevator hole. “Do I go in?”

“Absolutely not,” Grian replied. “You take this key - here, you have one - you throw it into this hopper and you then jump in.”

He demonstrated and then jumped in. A few seconds later False could hear intense waterlogged shouting and gurgling.

“You okay?” she asked. She looked down the hole to see Grian blocking off the space under the block of water, dripping wet. She then noticed that the hems of his trousers were signed.

“There was lava,” he gasped. “Somebody put lava under the water.”

“I figured as much,” False sighed. She jumped down after him.

Grian gave her a tour of the bro cave, which was simply a tour - nothing special. What was special was that upon exiting the bunker, right outside the entrance, there was a lectern with a book on it. She immediately checked under the dirt around it for traps, but found none.

“Okay,” she said. “Read it, G.”

Grian took the book and flipped through the pages. “It’s from Tango - or maybe not. He’s telling us to go to the deadquarters and if we succeed in reaching the third floor, he’ll give us a list and the locations of all the traps that the dead hermits have laid.”

“What do you mean, maybe not?” False demanded.

_Right. I haven’t told her about what we’ve found out. If she knows, who knows what she might do - she’s so impulsive that she might just storm the Halloween district and kill everybody._

“It doesn’t matter - I was just thinking about how Tango pretends that he’s not that grey version,” he lied. “So, should we do it?”

“I don’t see why not,” False replied. “But tomorrow - I have things I need to deal with right now.”

She stomped away, and as she did so, he heard her mutter under his breath, “stupid Tango.”

~~~~

The next morning, they met on top of the skull that housed the nether portal in the Halloween district.

“You ready?” Grian asked.

“I’m ready, and have been so for the last three hours,” False snapped. She had been waiting at the skull since eight in the morning, an hour before the scheduled time of 9. Grian had arrived two hours late.

“Okay,” he said. They jumped off the skull and flew up towards the front entrance of the deadquarters.

They landed just on the edge of the doorway, where the red carpet started. The corridor in front of them seemed suspiciously untrapped, and there was a clear path to the stairway.

“I suspect a lava trap under the carpet,” he announced. He looked closely at the carpet itself and noticed something. “Aha. If you look closely, there are activated redstone particles floating above the carpet.”

“Yeah, as if I hadn’t noticed already,” False scoffed. “So, what do we do?”

“We BRO!” Grian yelled as he suddenly ran full speed across the carpet. The moment his feet touched a large path of carpet in the middle of the corridor, it fell away, revealing lava underneath.

“I knew it!” Grian crowed. “Come on, jump across.”

“I’m not the best at parkour,” False confessed.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be fine!” Grian said. “You’re a bro!”

She blinked, and jumped. Her feet touched the stone left in the middle and she launched off the ground again. This time landing safely on the other side of the hole.

“Good job, Falsie!” Grian cheered. “C-come on, let’s go!”

So they continued along their quest.

They went into different rooms.

They unlocked secrets. They outsmarted the builders of the deadquarters. They left signs with a few choice words written on them.

And all the while as they explored the deadquarters. Grian was constantly alert, looking for anything that might give him a clue to who built it (the copies of the hermits, obviously, but who exactly were they?) and what they wanted.

They did not succeed in reaching the second floor.

Perhaps it was the dark and cold atmosphere that ignited fear in their hearts that got the better of them, or Grian’s determination to not succumb to death, but they spent only half an hour trying to unlock the second floor, to no avail.

“What a waste of time that was,” False sighed as they stood in front of the portal.

Grian had to agree. They hadn’t solved anything, and he was no closer to solving the mystery that were the copies.

“Well,let’s head back,” he suggested. “Need to do some work in the bro cave.”

“Yeah, I’ve got some work to do over in the medieval area,” False agreed. They both stepped into the portal and then parted ways once they reached the nether hub.

~~~

Grian was thinking heavily as he entered the inner chamber of the dragon head, stepping on the pressure plates to open the door. He hadn’t gathered much information - or any information at all - during his visit.

He decided that it was time to upgrade the interior of the cave again. He took the masks of the bros that were laying on the chairs, and placed them on the left wall. He then placed a few signs saying “THE BRO CHART” and “HOW BRO ARE YOU?”.

It wasn’t until after he had finished this that he heard the hiss of TNT. He turned around to see TNT raining from dispensers in the ceiling. He was panicking, but he knew that all he had to do was escape from the room and everything would be fine.

Grasping his totem of undying in his hand, he made a beeline for the entrance to the chamber. But the TNT blocked his way, and within a few seconds, Grian was no more.

~~~

False was standing in a field in the medieval district when she saw Grian’s death message.

Grian blew up.

<FalseSymmetry> oh geez, what have you done now?

<Grian> i deaded

She chuckled and rolled her eyes. So Grian was now dead, marking the first death in the dragon bros. She hoped she wasn’t next.

She turned her attention back to the field that she was clearing out. It was located close to the quarry. She was flattening out the area to build a stable and another decorative carrot farm.

She noticed an andesite pillar next to her beacon. Before she realized what she was doing, she had broken the two blocks of andesite, revealing an observer underneath.

She screamed as the ground exploded, obliterating her, too.

She respawned immediately on a bed nearby. She walked over to see a giant crater in the middle of the area, where the andesite pillar and her beacon had previously been.

~~~

A/N: For the purposes of making this story flower well, the bro funeral did not happen. If there was no ‘dead team’ the funeral was not really necessary, and I imagine that Grian would avoid telling False about the clones to prevent her from rushing over to the Halloween district and killing all of them, as mentioned earlier. The other dragon bros wouldn’t know about this fear, so he would try keeping False away from them.

Also the sheer length of this chapter has made me reluctant to write anything not totally necessary.

~~~

The three members of IDEA were sitting in their meeting room in the IDEA building. Shashwammy - who was greyed out everywhere except the glass part of his helmet, which was green - was sitting, thoughtfully tapping the table while Keralis and Bdubs (still sporting a very fashionable dragon head) sat awkwardly on either side of him.

“We really need to up our game,” X remarked. Keralis blinked rapidly.

“Yeah, you do,” he agreed. “You’ve only killed, what, two people? Cub’s killed the four people who have died after him - Impulse, Tango, Grian and False.”

He smiled as he heard Shashwammy grind his teeth.

“Which is why I need your help,” he declared after he recovered. Keralis exchanged glances with Bdubs. “If you lead someone else who is still alive into IDEA for me, and kill her, then I will protect you from any traps that I know of.”

“Her?” Bdubs echoed. “Only one female is still alive. Surely you don’t want us to go after Cleo?”

“But I _do_ ,” Shashwammy clarified. “I’ll show you what I’ve set up. You’ll give her a tour of IDEA starting from the actual interior designs, and then go up the water elevator and show her around the insides, and down the other water elevator, through the storage corridor and then she’ll go up the stairs to a gift shop, which won’t exist but she’ll fall into a pit on the other side of the stairs where there will be TNT which will kill her.”

“That was three sentences,” Keralis muttered. Shashwammy rolled his eyes.

“I don’t feel comfortable doing this,” Bdubs said worriedly. “Cleo’s definitely going to come after us after she dies. Nobody cares about the rule that the dead aren’t allowed to come after the alive.”

Shashwammy glared at him. “You don’t have a choice.”

So they did. They met up with Cleo at IDEA. They showed her around. And once they got to the end of the tour, they stopped.

“What’s up there?” Cleo asked, pointing up the stairs.

“Oh, that? That’s the gift shop,” Keralis explained.

“You can take a look,” Bdubs suggested.

Keralis watched as Cleo walked up the stairs. She got to the very top and stumbled, causing her to fall forwards and until a hole that had opened up in the floor.

A piercing scream was the last that they heard of her.

They returned to the boardroom, where the color version of Shashwammy was waiting for them.

“Hi, Shashwammy. Why are you colored now?” Keralis asked.

“And why did you tell us to kill Cleo? I’m asking you again because she’s going to MURDER US,” said Bdubs.

“What? Colored? Kill Cleo?” X repeated. He then realized what they were talking about. “Don’t tell me -”

“What?” Keralis asked.

X was trembling. So there was a copy of him as well. He should’ve known.

“Follow me,” he ordered. He stormed off in the direction of the Hermitville nether portal. They went through and reached the Halloween district within a minute.

“What’s going on?” Bdubs asked.

“What you saw, the greyed-out version of me, was not me,” X explained. “And I need to get to the bottom of this.”

“What?” Keralis asked.

He shook his head as he flew around the area. He couldn’t see anything, and the area felt strangely … empty. That was strange. Usually there were mobs spawning, as well as the feeling of being watched, which he now knew as being from the copies of the hermits.

_They’re gone._

_I need to tell the others. This time, I can do something_ , he realized. He took out his communicator to see that the chat function wasn’t working.

“Hey, Bdubs, my communicator’s broken for a bit. Can you tell the others a message?” he asked.

“Yeah, sure!” Bdubs replied. He took his communicator out of his pocket. “Wait, mine’s not working either.”

They both turned to see Keralis, who was holding his own communicator and shrugging. “Sorry dudes, mine’s broken too.”

The harsh reality sank in.

_What the heck am I going to do now?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been astonishingly busy over the past few days and have not been able to continue writing or updating, so here is my long apology chapter.


	8. And so the game of life and death continued

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Basically loads of people die.

TFC was walking around his bunker one day when suddenly, he heard pistons retrace behind him. He turned around and opened the door he had just walked through to see that the floor in front of it had disappeared, revealing a hole in the ground with lava at the bottom.

 _Ohoho_ , he thought. _Those greyskins tried to come after me, did they? Well, they better try again!_

He casually covered the hole up and replaced the pressure plate. He wasn’t worried about the traps. He had survived a long time under the ground, and nothing was about to change. Plus, even if he did die, that was a good thing - this Demise game had gone on for far too long.

He continued down the corridor to get to the lower parts of his vault. As he came down the stairs, he noticed what seemed to be a box full of armor stands. He then noticed, on his right hand side, that there was a lectern.

 _They don’t take me for an idiot, do they?_ He worried. _Obviously I’m not that stupid._

_But, oh well, I’m just going to read it, anyway. What’s the worst that could happen? They couldn’t possibly blow up my whole base._

He opened up the book on the lectern.

_VAULT-TEC EMERGENCY PROCEDURES_

_You messed up the experiment and here’s what to do._

_Excuse me? I didn’t mess up anything, thank you very much_ , TFC thought indignantly.

_There are now mutants in your base._

_You may be able to reason with them._

_You may be able to bribe them._

_We have provided two vault tec security turrets for your use._

He chuckled. _This isn’t a trap! This is just another hermit pulling a prank on me._

He turned to the next page.

_Remember, these vaults were not designed to save anybody._

The floor under him collapsed. He gave a little shout as he fell into a pool of lava.

He could feel his limbs burning, shrivelling up, but he couldn’t do anything. He knew that he had a potion of fire resistance and a bucket of water on him, but he was too surprised, and honestly too amused, to use them.

All he did was laugh as he was consumed by the orange flames.

It took a long time for him to die. There was pain everywhere, and it froze him but, but he didn’t care, oh no. He was way too amused at his pure gullibility. Finally, as the lava ate through his chestplate, he died.

~~~

Keralis had returned from the Halloween district shortly after Shashwammy’s mental breakdown. He had told Keralis and Bdubs to go back to wherever they needed to be, and that he had some business he needed to do.

Keralis had been very suspicious, but he wasn’t thinking of that now.

He was currently at Mumbo’s witch farm, where the dragon-headed moustache man was taking him around the base.

“This feels very trapped,” he remarked.

“Yeah! Tango was here the other day, all greyed out, and he said that he had built a minigame - well, I’m calling it a minigame,” Mumbo explained. “I’m too scared to go do it myself, so I’m asking you - do you want to try it?”

“What?” Keralis asked. “Tell me more.”

“I’m aware that you enjoy playing minigames, so I think that you’re the best man for the job,” Mumbo said. “But, BUT, I’m warning you now, there is a chance of you dying to the minigame. Tango said it was a trap.”

“I can do that,” Keralis answered confidently. “Just let me grab my totems.”

He went to the closest ender chest and took out three more totems of undying.

“How many totems do you have, man?” Mumbo asked.

He thought about it. “I’m going to grab just one more.”

“Follow me,” Mumbo instructed. They flew towards the storage area of the witch farm, where it was quite dark.

“The entrance is just there,” said Mumbo, pointing towards the entrance. “Are you very sure you want to do this? I’m warning you now, there’s a decent chance you'll die and lose Demise.”

“I’ll be fine,” Keralis repeated.He reached for his ender chest again. “I’m just going to get two more totems.”

“How many totems do you have?” Mumbo asked. Keralis didn’t reply. “Well, now that you have like, ninety totems of undying, how about you head in?”

“I’ve got six, and sure!” Keralis replied.

“So there’s string in front of the nether portal, and if you step on it, you should fall in,” Mumbo directed.

“I’m trusting you, Bumbo,” Keralis warned as he walked towards the string and fell into a box of iron.

“Woah,” he said softly as he looked around. There was a giant purple spinny thing in the middle of the room, pressure plates everywhere, sighs, a chest, redstone lamps and TNT in the ceiling.

“I need you to tell me what you see,” Mumbpo called.

“Oh! Well, uh, there’s a purple ball spinning in the middle of the room,” he began.

“A purple ball spinning,” Mumbo mused.

“Well, a cube,” Keralis corrected himself.

“Woah, I’ve dropped down into the redstone, and - please, please don’t do anything that could cause me to die because I’m really close to where you are now.”

They chuckled awkwardly together as Keralis walked around the room. He noticed a book in an item frame with a sign underneath it. “Oh, there’s a book here. Read me if you want to live.”

He took it out from the item frame. “It’s called Death by Chicken and it’s by Tango.”

He flipped through the book. It said that if he broke any block, he would die a horrible death, and that to live, he had to activate all of the pressure plates at the same time, before the redstone lamps all turned off. It also said that to start, he needed to throw any item onto the soul sand in front of the sign.

He walked over to the chest and looked inside. Inside, there were many eggs. “There’s lots of eggs in this chest, Mumbo.”

“Oh. Oh. So what you’ve got to do, I’m assuming, is throw the eggs onto the pressure plates and hope that chickens hatch from them. The chickens will help you activate all the pressure plates at once,” Mumbo explained.

“That’s … easier said than done.”

“Don’t throw an egg at the crystal in the middle of the room, though,” Mumbo continued. “It could explode.”

Keralis took out many of the eggs and took the book out of the item frame again, but he fumbled it and it fell on the soul sand. Fireworks were everywhere and Keralis blinked rapidly.

Music began to play in the background as Keralis started throwing eggs at the pressure plates, totem of undying gripped tightly in his other hand.

“Should I just machine-gun the eggs?” Keralis asked.

“Yeah,” Mumbo answered. “Just try not to hit the crystal -”

The words came out of his mouth too late, just as Keralis, while throwing the eggs everywhere, hit the crystal and exploded.

~~~

“Okay,” X muttered. “Okay, okay, okay.”

“What’s going on now?” Bdubs asked.

The two of them were standing in the IDEA boardroom again. X had explained to Bdubs everything that he had found out about the dead copies of the hermits.

“Bdubs,” he began. “I know this is a lot to ask, but could you please invite the one pretending to be Cleo into your base for armor stand work? If I understand them correctly, they’ll pretend that Cleo is really, really mad at you and seeks revenge - which she doesn’t, by the way, right? You three had a chat the other day.”

Bdubs cringed painfully. He did remember the conversation he, Keralis and Cleo had had after her death. It was quite painful, but had resulted in Cleo admitting that she didn’t really care for the diamonds. Which was a good thing that he hadn’t made an enemy - Cleo was one of the scariest people he knew when she was angry, which was why he hadn’t wanted to go after her in the first place.

“Yeah, we did,” he said. “I mean, I _can_ , but I don’t think it’s a really good idea.”

“Come on, Bdubs,” X pleaded. “It’s for the greater good.”

“Ugh, fine,” he moaned.

“You can’t possibly care about diamonds that much that you would value the Demise winnings over saving the world,” X said.

“Well I don’t, but dead Cleo’s probably going to be super scary!” Bdubs replied.

“That is true,” X agreed.

“Fine, fine,” Bdubs sighed. “I’ll do it.”

“Excellent!” X said. “Let’s get to work!”

~~~

Bdubs met Cleo or the fake Cleo, in his castle in New New Hermitville. Well, in the underground torture room, to be more exact. Not that he called it a torture room. He preferred to think of it as an armor stand display room.

“Bdubs,” ‘Cleo’ growled. Bdubs blinked.

“Hey, Cleo,” he greeted her. She rolled her eyes and sighed.

“What do you want now? I’m assuming you want me to pose these armor stands.”

“That would be correct, yes,” Bdubs answered. “I want to make this room a display room for previous pris- I mean, residents of the castle.”

“That sounds okay,” she mused. “How much are you willing to pay me?”

“Uh, around … three diamond blocks? He asked.

“For this measly job? Done,” she replied. “Return in two hours with the diamond blocks. Meanwhile, I will be writing my eulogy.”

“See you!” he called as he left the room.

He took a deep breath as he stepped out into the sunlight of the streets of his castle. He just had to wait. He could tell X everything afterwards.

Two hours later, he had three diamond blocks in his pockets and was returning to the room. ‘Cleo’ was nowhere to be found. Instead, she had left a lectern on the corner of the room.

He opened the book.

_Cleo’s eulogy_

_We are gathered here today to mourn the passing and reviving and then once more passing of ZombieCleo. She was taken from this world by treachery and avarice. A pure soul who trusted those she deemed worthy with her life. Keralis and_

Here the page ended. He turned the page.

_Bdubs shall know THE FURY OF A THOUSAND SUNS! SHE DOES NOT GO QUIETLY INTO THIS GOOD NIGHT AND RAGES! RAGES AT THE DYING OF THE LIGHT!_

_MAY YOU BURN FOREVER IN TORMENT!_

Before he could process what was happening, he had dropped into a pit in the ground and lava was slowly making its way down towards him. His water bucket was within reaching distance, but he panicked and dropped it.

Needless to say, BdoubleO100 was feeling toasty warm in the next few seconds.

~~~

X sat grimly on the grass at Sahara. In front of him sat Mumbo, Iskall and Joe. Doc preferred to stand.

“So what you’re saying is that there are copies of ourselves, and they’re trying to take us down for an unknown reason?” Iskall asked.

“Well, there are copies of ourselves, but I’m only assuming that they’re trying to take us down. The Demise game was probably all a ploy made by the fake Grian to get his friends to turn into fake, grey, us-es,” X replied. “So what I need you guys to do is pretend that you don’t know what they’re up to - gather information, but don’t be suspicious.”

“Why?” Doc asked.

“What? Why, as in why they’re doing this?” X asked. “How am I meant to know?”

“No. I meant why, as in why are you telling us this?” Doc asked. “How do we know you’re not tricking us? I’ve got no doubt that there are people pretending to be us, but how do I know that you’re not one of them, trying to lull us into a false sense of security?”

X didn’t reply. He knew that Doc’s suspicious mindset had been a cause of his mind-control during the events of Area 77. It had even stopped him from eating golden carrots.

“You can choose not to believe me, but I’m telling you that I am Xisuma, the admin, who’s trying to help you,” he hissed.

“Wow, no need to get hostile. I’m just sayin’,” Doc said, shrugging.

“Why didn’t you tell us earlier?” Iskall asked.

“My communicator was broken when I found concrete evidence,” X explained. “It’s fine now.”

“Is that all?” Joe asked. “My dog was kidnapped by the Greyskins and I just got him back, and I kind of need to make sure he’s okay.”

“The Greyskins?” X asked. Something about that name seemed familiar.

“That’s what they’re calling themselves, and they usually name the mobs they use in their traps that as well,” Mumbo explained. “Like how Scar was killed by a pufferfish called “the Greyskins”.”

“I see,” X mused. “Yeah, that’s all. See you!”

The group dispersed.

~~~

Joe knew he shouldn’t be doing this.

He knew that it was a very very bad idea.

He knew that there was a 66.67% chance that he would die.

But he did it anyway.

He stood at the entrance to the deadquarters. He was ready. He was prepared to brave the dangers, probably dying, but he knew that if he reached the top, he would gain crucial information. Perhaps so crucial that it would help X save the world.

He took a deep breath as he walked down the corridor, jumping over the pool of lava with a sign on a stone block in the middle. He was going to conquer the deadquarters, no matter the cost.

He began his journey.

Soon after he reached the second level of the building, he found a room with masks of all the hermits, surrounded by redstone lamps. Only his, Mumbo’s, Iskall’s and Doc’s were still lit.

In the corner of the room was a door with a sign above it. “Room of dark secrets of the dead.”

He knew subconsciously that it was a trap, but it was almost as if he wasn’t controlling his own limbs as he walked over, on top of the pressure plate, and fell into a pool of lava on the other side.

~~~

<iskall85> hey BUMBO

<MumboJumbo> what is it, ISKALL

<iskall85> you wanna go endbusting again

<MumboJumbo> why now, of all times

<iskall85> please, mumbo?

<MumboJumbo> i wasn’t going to say no, but why would you ask me right now, with everything going on?

<iskall85> great! Meet you at the portal!

Iskall turned off his communicator triumphantly. Time to get to the end portal.

They met just outside the end portal room a few minutes later.

“Hey, Bumbo!” he said.

“Hi, Iskall,” Mumbo replied. The two of them began making their way down the path towards the end portal at the same time.

“The End is super untrapped,” he said confidently. “I’ve been there a few times recently. There’s no TNT, at least where I went.”

“That’s good to know,” Mumbo remarked.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Mumbo replied. “I suddenly got nervous all of a sudden.”

“Yeah, same,” he agreed. “I’m going in first!”

He cannonballed in, and immediately fell off the platform. He activated his elytra to see Mumbo, holding a cracking totem and jumping off the obsidian platform too.

“What was that?” Mumbo asked. He landed next to Iskall on the main End island.

“What happened, dude?” Iskall asked. He had heard distinct TNT noises after he had fallen off of the platform.

“I have no idea! I went through and there was just TNT everywhere!” Mumbo exclaimed. “Wait a minute - it was you!”

“What?” Iskall asked, surprised.

Mumbo narrowed his eyes, thinking deeply. “You were the one bringing up how untrapped the End is!”

“Mumbo - Mumbo, listen! I would never trap you! You’re a bro!” Iskall explained.

Mumbo glared at him. “No, you were the one who trapped me - watch out there’s an enderman.”

Iskall dodged the tall black being.

Mumbo raised his eyebrows as he watched Iskall try to explain himself. He wasn’t convinced. “Mumbo, I promise you that I didn’t try to kill you. We’re bros!”

“Well, I came here to end bust, not to argue,” Mumbo decided. “If you tried to kill me, then I’ll just kill you later.”

“Oh wow, I feel so reassured,” Iskall muttered.

“Yeah, yeah,” Mumbo said. “You got your ender pearls?”

“Yup!” Iskall replied, fishing them out of his pocket. They walked towards the nearest end gateway.

“I’ll go first,” Mumbo volunteered. He stepped up the endstone staircase to the end gateway. He threw an ender pearl into the darkness, heart in mouth.

And promptly blew up.

He awoke in a bed in his witch farm, items all gone.

“No!” he said out loud. He got out of the bed and looked around, not sure what he was expecting. His tools, his armor, they were all gone.

_No, Iskall! It was you, wasn’t it? You killed me! You knew that there was a TNT minecart there, and you pointed me towards it. I swear, when I get my hands on you, I'll - ugh!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some deaths are a bit different from how they actually happened.
> 
> I'm almost done writing this work. I'm on the last chapter now, so daily updates will commence.


	9. And so he built a bomb, tonight the raid farm is Vietnam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are meetings and explosions. Also the chapter title is a Heathers: the Musical reference. I'm not trying to be culturally insensitive to people of the Vietnamese nationality.

“So, what do we do now?” ‘X’ asked.

Grimdog sat silently at the head of the table of Stress’s crypt. The other deadsonas were gathered around the table - that was the name they had chosen for themselves. “After we move into the new base, we’ll have to get rid of either Iskall or Doc.”

“I would say to get rid of Iskall,” ‘Mumbo’ began, “But he’s probably going to say Doc. He’s never going to let Doc win Demise - any amount of happiness is too much for Doc, he says.”

“Still angry over the fact that Doc broke free of his mind-control, huh?” ‘Stress’ scoffed

“Which leaves Iskall still alive. Now, Vi- I mean, the person we’ve got up for being Iskall is still making his way here, so we might have to wait a bit, and we all know who’s going to pretend to be Doc,” Grim sighed. “However, he wants us to -”

“Why do you guys insist on calling him, “him”?” ‘Stress’ asked. “We all know that monsters - the real ones - don’t have genders.”

The group was silent.

“Uh, Stress … you might want to calm down,” ‘Grian’ suggested.

“Why should I?” ‘Stress’ hissed.

“Stress, I know that this is a difficult time for you, but you can’t possibly start doubting right now, when we’re so close to finishing phase 1 of our plan,” Grimdog pleaded.

‘Stress’ glared at him. “Plan to do what? Permanently kill all the hermits? Why?”

“Because they’re destroying the world they live in!” Grimdog exclaimed. “We’ve been through this.”

“What they’ve done is no worse than what we’re doing to destroy them,” ‘Stress’ argued.

“She has a point,” ‘Grian’ pointed out. “I was one of the first ones appointed to go on this mission, and I’ve seen what they’ve done. They’re not as bad as he makes them out to be.”

“Exactly,” ‘Stress’ finished. “I’m done. I’m out.”

“What? Stress, you can’t just -” Grimdog began, then stopped. The deadsonas, who had all been watching ‘Stress’, now turned to him. His eyes flashed red.

_ Oh dear. Ohhhh dear _ , thought basically everyone at once.  _ I do not want to see this. _

‘Stress’ stood directly in front of the now mind-controlled Grimdog.

“Well look who decided to show up,” she snarled. “Pretending to be Doc too unambitious for you? Perhaps you would like to control all of us!”

“Shut up,” the person behind Grimdog growled. “You know nothing, and now you’re trying to disobey me? Please.”

She clenched her fists. “Why don’t you just mind-control me instead? That might stop me from disobeying you.”

He scoffed. “And what makes you think that I wouldn’t mind-control you? You can’t possibly believe that your friends are strong enough mentally to stand against me. You know that you’re eternally linked to my mind”

She gritted her teeth. “Don’t forget that you can die too.”

“And who could possibly kill me?” he asked.

“The hermits could,” she answered.

“Which is why they are never going to find me, and if they do all of you will die,” he snarled. “Now, only two people are left in Demise. We, of course, are going to get rid of Doc first. I don’t particularly care about Iskall, but Doc isn’t allowed to feel happiness.”

‘Grian’ shifted uncomfortably. He knew that this hate had come from Doc breaking free of his mind-control, but he didn’t understand how he still thought he was in the right. He had seen Doc being overly suspicious and avoiding golden carrots, the main source of food for the hermits.

“That is why,” the person controlling Grimdog continued, “you, Grian, are going to kill Doc.”

“Me?” ‘Grian’ asked. “Why me?”

“Don’t question me,” he ordered. “Just do it.”

“I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with this,” ‘Grian’ confessed.

“You don’t get to decide,” ‘Grimdog’ shot back. “Besides, it’s for the greater good.I can take his dead form sooner. Didn’t you swear to bring justice?”

“I did, but …” he trailed off.

“Then that’s all decided then!” he said blithely, and Grimdog was released from his mental hold.

“Are you okay, Grim?” ‘Stress’ asked.

“I’m fine,” he sighed;. “Saving the world is a good thing, but getting mind-controlled is very annoying.”

‘Oh, whatever!” ‘Stress’ snapped. “I still can’t believe that you still believe that you’re in the right!”

“Stress, calm down,” ‘X’ ordered. “How can you think of backing out now?”

“Stress, I think that you should head back to your room,” Grimdog hissed.

“This is my room!” ‘Stress’ yelled back.

“That is true,” ‘Scar’ remarked.

“I don’t care, just get out of my sight!” Grimdog ordered. ‘Stress’ shot him a glare and stormed out of the room.

“As I was saying,” Grimdog continued like nothing had happened, “the second phase in our plan will take place as soon as Doc dies. So, what will we do in the meantime?”

“I’m happy to keep on trapping the hermits,” ‘Cub’ answered. A few others nodded.

“I’m happy to work on the interior of the new base,” ‘Keralis’ added. “It’s a bit drab. We’re moving in tomorrow, right?”

“Yup,” Grimdog answered. “Cool. Okay, go off to do your stuff.”

‘Grian’ stepped away from the crowd as he climbed up the ladder to find ‘Stress’. The other deadsona was perched on the roof of her crypt.

“Hey, you okay?” he asked carefully.

“What do you think?” she shot back.

“Okay, okay,” he surrendered, stepping away from her. She was his friend, but sometimes friends were difficult. What should he do? Should he be on her side or everyone else’s side? He didn’t want to pick. Grimdog was his friend too.

But was the mind-controller his friend as well?

~~~

Doc looked up at his raid farm. It was quite functional, and quite efficient as well. Now all he had to do was decorate the dome at the top, which was almost finished. Everything else was done. He also wanted to do some terraforming at the bottom.

He started up the scaffolding tower again. He needed to collect some resources from the chests at the top, but he didn’t currently have an elytra. The sun was setting rapidly and he could already see mobs beginning to spawn.

He took out a fire resistance potion and a regeneration potion from the chest and sat down. He could hear a scuffle coming from the base of his raid farm, but he didn’t think anything of it.

As he sat down on a chair, he thought about what had happened recently. The events of Demise were even more eventful than Area 77, and perhaps even more terrifying. He had linked the two events together and deduced that the person who had mind-controlled him and these new clones were linked, but he didn’t know how so.

Which meant that they were probably after him. He knew that he and Iskall were the only two people still alive in Demise, and if they were connected, then that meant that they hated him and were after him to stop him from winning Demise. Perhaps they thought that he didn’t deserve any amount of happiness.

Or there was the option that the person who was mind-controlling him wasn’t any of the clones and instead was mind-controlling the clones, which was very complicated and terrifying that one person could hold that much power.

_ Or _ none of them existed and it was just one of the hermits going rogue and trying to kill everyone, which wasn’t completely out of the question. Or one of the ex-hermits who had gone adventuring - like Wels and Python, or his two other brothers in the NHO, Etho and Beef.

_ Now is not the time to think about the NHO. Now is the time to figure out what’s going on behind the scenes, and how you can put everything back to normal. _

He looked up at the sky, which was now dark. He checked his communicator and saw that it was near seven o’clock in the evening. There were still three hours to kill before he could go to sleep at an early hour - he could technically go to sleep at ten, but he usually found himself staying up till midnight.

He climbed back down the scaffolding to get to his bed with an elytra tucked under his arm, but he saw that his bed was not there, and there was a box of obsidian there instead.

_ Who on earth would put that there, and think that I would fall for it? These copies aren’t too bright, are they? _

He landed on top of the box to see that the box had changed into a Grian-shaped being that stood on the walls of the box, leaving nothing underneath Doc. He let out a small yelp as he fell downwards, where he saw that he activated a tripwire. The rolling of TNT minecarts towards him was the last thing he saw before he awoke on the circular platform around his raid farm, on his other bed.

_ It was fake Grian. I saw him. It definitely wasn’t the real Grian, certainly. Oh, that bastard. If I ever get my hands on him, I’ll - _

He interrupted his increasingly violent thoughts to think logically. This meant that the Grian copy had known exactly where his raid farm was and what to do to get him to die. This was bad, very bad. Not only because he had lost a hundred diamond blocks, but apparently these dead clones knew more about the hermits than he thought.

He buried his head in his hands. This was much worse than he had originally believed. He had to do something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will be going on a trip tomorrow and the day after that, so I'll try using that Chapter Publication Date thing to set chapters to be released automatically. If it doesn't work and the chapter uploads today, then I guess you guys can read three chapters?


	10. And so lecterns are recieved

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which libraries are visited and words are read, outside the library too.
> 
> Posted on the same day as the previous chapter, ha ha

X yawned and stretched. He put the book back on the shelf and took out the book next to it.

He was currently in the library under the Statue of Hermity, searching through the Alien Encounters section. The books moved from the fifth world had been named by Etho, who had been collecting accounts of non-hermit interactions. The ‘Alien’ in the name didn’t mean the things that Area 77 had sought to find, but something foreign.

He looked at the cover of the book in his hands. He could kind of recall it all the way back from the fourth world, but he had never read it. It had belonged to Wels. Why was it now in the library? It must have made it into the library some time during the fifth world.

He opened it carefully. It had no author and no title, but the pages were filled with writing.

He had been searching for something about the clones of the hermits, and he had found it.

The pages were filled with information about a group of people - shapeshifters - that sought to destroy hermitkind. From the wording, it seemed that it had been written by Hypnotizd. And from the scribbles in between the lines, it seemed that Wels had taken it all for fiction and that Hypno had a very wild imagination.

It said that the copies were shapeshifters. That made sense. That meant that they could change between hermits. He wondered what their natural form looked like.

The book then went on to say that they all followed a leader that sought to kill the hermits and take over the hermit’s territories for himself. That was believable. And the Demise game would have been a way to integrate the dead copies into society so that we wouldn’t question why there’s now dead versions of us everywhere. It would’ve been really effective, if it had worked.

He studied the sketch of the leader very carefully. If X had to describe him, then he would say that he looked like his brother, Evil Xisuma. Which was silly, since EX was long gone and there was no way he could be the leader of the shape-shifting menaces.

But two looked exactly alike.

_ If it really is EX, what would you do? _

_ Welcome him with open arms _ , he thought immediately.  _ Everyone can be redeemed, and he is my brother, after all. I would keep a close eye on him, sure, but I would welcome him back. I would make him, and all his shape-shifting friends, into hermits. _

He stretched again. All this thinking was very tiring, and sad. There was no way this leader was Evil X. Evil X was gone, and it was his responsibility to make sure the other people he cared about remained safe.

~~~

Ren took off his sunglasses as he stared at his screen.

Docm77 blew up

<Renthedog> wowie, my dude! So you’re dead?

There was no reply. He put his communicator away again as he sat up from his lounge chair made of carpet. He yawned and decided to take a walk around his base.

The exteriors of all the buildings in his complex had all been completed a while ago, but the interior of the northernmost building left much to be desired.

He had been sunbathing without sunscreen on the roof of the prismarine building, but now as he slipped down the room tiles and into the inside of the building, he realized how much work needed to be done. He knew that X was thinking about moving them to a new world soon, so he really wanted to get all his stuff done.

He opened the door at the front of the building and stepped through. He made his way past the back of the red nether brick garden, then entered it through one of the back doors. 

From the inside of the garden, he could see the dragon heads on Tango’s base and some parts of False’s giant town that she built for hers. What was strange, though, was a lectern in the middle of the square of scaffolding.

He approached it cautiously. It could very well be trapped, and he was having serious Demise flashbacks. He cautiously opened the book to see it had no title and the author had indecipherable handwriting. His or her name was completely unreadable. He turned to the next page to see that the rest of the book was quite neat, which was strange.

He began to read the words.

_ Look out. I’m not sure exactly what’s going to happen, but it’s not good. Some of my friends are also sending messages to other hermits. I’m just letting you know that though everything seems peaceful, it’s not what it seems. _

~~~

Stress clutched at the stitches in her side as she sped along the corridors of her castle. She was panting heavily, but there was only one more room to check. Her pockets were full of ice but not nearly enough ice as she would like.

The ice stocks were decreasing heavily. She hadn’t noticed, being busy doing other things, but now she had hardly any ice to her name and could barely call herself the Ice Queen anymore. It was probably time to pay a visit to Iskall’s ice farm or go ice grinding again. Sahara’s ice stocks (and therefore her ice stocks) had been completely bought out by Ren while he was building Speedy Pines.

She opened the chests in the last room at the end of the corridor, but it was empty.  _ Great. I’m almost out of ice, and I need to stock up at all my ice shops as well as supply it to Sahara. What a great day. _

She turned on her heel and walked back down the corridor. She paused at the entrance to the main hall. There were a few chests in there. Perhaps it was worth taking a look there.

She walked down the stairs and saw that although there were chests in the room, there was also a lectern in the middle of the room.

_ Oh dear. This seems dangerous. I should probably investigate. _

The book atop the lectern seemed to have no title and the author’s name was practically unreadable. There were a few messy a’s, and perhaps an l or two. She opened the book to see that it read:

_ Terrible things are going to happen. Stress, I know you don’t know who I am, but you’ve got to keep yourself safe. Protect your friends, too. _

~~~

Cub sighed as he finished off another iron golem. It dissolved into white particles, leaving two iron and a poppy on the ground. Did he feel bad about killing the golems? Possibly. Was it necessary to keep ConCorp safe and tidy? Absolutely.

He took out another engraved pin from his pocket. He was working on naming the villagers in ConCorp, but the iron golems kept on getting in the way.

He frowned at the swamp leatherworker standing in front of him. He attached the pin that said “Lisa Leatherworker” to its belt. He did a few more villagers before realizing that he had run out of pins and he still had about twenty more to go.

He decided that that was enough annoying villager work for the day. He stood up and made his way up the road, past the fisherman, cleric and mason buildings. He turned right to get to the ConCorp super smelter before he noticed something.

Directly in front of the water feature at the center of ConCorp, there was a lectern. Quite an ordinary lectern, actually. The book on top of it seemed quite normal, which was most suspicious.

He approached it carefully. He took out a shovel and began excavating the land around the lectern, checking for traps. As soon as he was done, he began reading the book.

The author had left no title and the only key to their identity was a signature, scrawled on the front cover. The book was addressed to Mr. Invincible.

_ Dear Mr. Invincible, _

_ I don’t know you, you don’t know me. Look out for your safety. If you want your friends to be safe and alive, then don’t do anything rash. Else, you’ll find that you friends will slowly disappear. _

~~~

Grian dropped down to the bottom floor of his base. He had decided that he was going to move his entire chest monster to the third floor. Firstly, he had to gather about thirty more shulker boxes and then move everything into the said shulker boxes, then move everything into the floor above the second floor.

Yay.

He made his way towards his “storage system” when he noticed that in the middle of his was was a lectern.

That was instantly suspicious. He opened his communicator.

<Grian> has anyone gotten a lectern in their base recently?

<FalseSymmetry> not me, why do you ask?

<impulseSV> false, for the last time: n o b o d y c a r e s

<FalseSymmetry> wow, how long did it take you to type that?

<cubfan135> i got one at concorp, but it didn’t explode or anything

<stressmonster101> yeah, i got one at my castle too.

<Renthedog> same lmao

<FalseSymmetry> is this for some christmas thing i wasn’t invited to?

<cubfan135> mine just told me to not do anything rash

<cubfan135> you should open yours

Grian tucked it away, then rolled up his sleeves. He could do this. All he needed to do was open the book.

He did so. There was one word on the page.

_ Run. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three things:
> 
> 1: The library that X was in is an entirely fictional place. Inside the water area where you trade heads with the villagers, there's two sea lanterns behind the wall that you enter by (there's a wall and two doors either side). You press a button, the sea lanterns disappear via piston magic, revealing a ladder. You climb down the ladder (quite a long way, mind you) and you enter the library. Unlike stronghold libraries, however, it's well-maintained and isn't made of stone bricks.
> 
> 2: The pins that Cub was putting on the villagers is the villager version of name tags, since name tagging doesn't really work in this universe. It changes from mob to mob. Name tags for tamed wolves, for example, show up as writing or a label on the collar.
> 
> 3: I think that I'll post chapter 11 after I come back (or tomorrow morning before I leave, I guess) (or if I have time, on the trip) since this chapter ends in a cliffhanger and it's more satisfying (in my opinion) if you have to wait a bit for an update. Also more annoying.


	11. And so things blow up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which more things explode and letters are found. Also, paper turns conscious.

He scrambled backwards from the lectern to see it, along with a good chunk of the middle of his base, explode.

_Dude, what the hell? Who would do this?_

He peered at the wreckage. It didn’t seem to be too serious. There was a circle with a radius of ten blocks missing from the floor of his base, but other than that, everything was peachy keen. There was water gushing in due to the fact that his base was built atop water, but everything else was fine.

He noticed a piece of paper in the water. He fished it out.

_Dear Grian,_

_I’m very sorry about what I had to do, but it’s necessary, as is everything that’s going to happen. You need to show this letter to the other hermits._

_Bad things are going to happen to you and your friends, but I’m trying to stop them from happening in the first place. It’s difficult, and it’s up to you and your friends to stop them as well. There’s someone who’s trying to kill you all, and Demise was his plan. You need to make Xisuma aware of this._

At the bottom of the page was a signature which Grian couldn’t read. He let it drop to the floor.

_What is going on?_

~~~

“What have you done?” he roared.

‘Grian’ cowered against the wall of the room. The mind-controlled version of Grimdog was holding a trident. Next to him, ‘Stress’ was poking her tongue out at him.

“Why would you tell them about what we’re doing?” he demanded. “Our entire operation could be busted.”

“Serves you right,” ‘Stress’ muttered.

“Sorry?” ‘Grian’ tried. “It won’t happen again?”

“Damn right it won’t,” ‘Grimdog’ hissed. He threw the trident at him and it hit his eye.

“Dude, what is wrong with you?” ‘Stress’ asked indignantly. She stepped over to where ‘Grian’ was.

The deadsonas were having a meeting in the map room on the first floor of the deadquarters. The dead versions of Grian and Stress were standing in front of the closest wall with the cartography table, Grimdog was standing opposite them in front of the lectern and the other deadsonas were standing in a circle around the room.

“And you,” ‘Grimdog’ continued, turning to ‘Cub’. “One of my most loyal ser- acquaintances, fraternizing with the enemy as well? I would have expected better from you.”

‘Cub’ started at the ground intently.

“If any of you think of doing this again, then I will remove you one by one, starting with your friend who I’m controlling right now,” ‘Grimdog’ spat. “He betrayed me, too.”

‘Stress’ shot a glare at him. “You need us. You can’t do anything without us. You’re too much of a coward to attempt anything by yourself.”

“And remind me again why I listen to you?” ‘Grimdog’ asked. “Repeat after me: I understand, and therefore I will obey.”

The other deadsonas repeated after him. ‘Stress’ snarled and said, “I don’t understand, and therefore I won’t obey this crap that you’re telling us to do.”

Grimdog was released from the mind controller’s grasp and he snapped to attention quickly. “Are you alright, Stress?”

“No, I’m not,” she snapped. “How can you guys obey him?”

“Like I said before, freedom. He’s offering us freedom from his mind-control as long as we can help him destroy the hermits,” Grimdog explained. “You haven’t been with us for very long, so you don’t understand how much we want to be free. Being in service to him isn’t very pleasant, so -”

“And you want to murder a group of people so that you can be free? Do you understand how selfish that is?” she asked.

“I do, but …” he trailed off.

“That’s enough,” ‘X’ barked. “The plan will continue. Stress, you need some time to think about where your loyalties lie. We’ll end this fight for once and for all.”

~~~

Grian scanned the map on his communicator for other hermits. X was either inside or underneath the Stature of Hermity, which was hard to access. The closest one to him apart from X seemed to be Scar, so he angled his wings in that direction.

Scar was standing in his chest monster on the closest island to Grian’s base, the one with the stone pyramid on it. Grian landed next to him.

“Oh hey, Grian,” Scar greeted him. “What’s up?”

“You need to see this,” Grian replied, without answering his question. He gave the note to Scar. “So I was in my base, and then there was this lectern, and I opened the book, and it exploded, and I found this note.”

“Holy crap,” Scar breathed as he scanned the page. “Bad things are going to happen. What bad things?”

He felt as if his legs were turning to jelly. He was getting reminded of everything that had taken place in Area 77. Grian grabbed his shoulders. “Don’t panic. I don’t know yet, but we need to get this to X-I-suma.”

“O-okay,” he stammered.

“He’s somewhere near the Stature of Hermity. Follow me,” Grian instructed, taking out rockets and launching into flight. The two of them made their way towards the famous prismarine statue.

“I think he’s in the library,” Scar said. “It’s a very Xisuma place to be, if he’s in the statue.”

“Okay,” Grian confirmed. “Let’s go down.”

~~~

X snapped the book shut and returned it to its place on the shelf. As he did so, he noticed a bunch of paper on the floor. He bent down to pick it up.

As he did so, the sheets of paper fluttered, then floated upwards to form something humanoid.

X stepped back. “What on earth?”

The sheets of paper stepped towards him. It spoke in a very familiar voice. “Don’t you know who I am?”

The voice sounded suspiciously like Evil Xisuma, but there was no way X was falling for that. “Don’t lie to me. Who are you?”

“Why, I’m your brother,” the paper formation replied. “Don’t you recognize me, Xisuma?”

“No, I don’t,” X spat.

“Don’t try to deny it,” the paper hissed, moving closer. X stepped back. “How would the hermits react if they knew that you’ve been searching for me for around a year now?”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” X growled. “Even if you were my brother -”

“Oh, but I _am_ ,” the paper interrupted. “I am the one who you call Evil Xisuma.”

“You may be my brother in blood but you lost that title a long time ago,” X said.

“X - I - I don’t want to fight with you,” the paper said. “You’re my brother.”

It stepped closer. X stepped backwards, only to realize that he was on the upper floor of the library and there was a fence behind him.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Please, X,” the paper begged. “I just want to rejoin you. I want to be a part of the hermits. I want to redeem myself.”

“And what if I don’t agree?” X asked, testing him.

“Then I will be forced to take a more violent approach,” the paper answered.

“Very well,” X said. “No.”

“That’s the wrong answer, I’m afraid,” the paper sighed. A sword appeared from its depths.

 _How does that even work?_ X thought as he found himself drawing his own sword.

“Now, my dear brother,” what X thought was Evil Xisuma hissed. “You’re going to die.”

~~~

Grian pressed the button, revealing a ladder below the two sea lanterns on the other side of the door. He and Scar climbed down the ladder and into the library.

The library was a beautiful place, but not now. Grian could hear what seemed like very loud paper and X saying “ow!” a lot. Either X was consistently getting papercuts or something else was happening.

The library was split into two levels, and Grian could see X walking backwards down the stairs in the middle of the room. He was wielding a sword, and after him came a bunch of floating paper that vaguely resembled a human being.

“Uh, Hi, X,” he said. “What’s happening?”

The sheets of paper behind him turned its ‘head’ towards him and Scar. He could almost swear it smiled before saying, “I’ll leave you to it. These two brave young lads have something to show you.”

The paper fluttered to the floor, ceasing to be conscious. X turned to the newcomers.

“What was that?” Grian demanded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In four minutes, I will be leaving on a trip.


	12. And so meetings are organized

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I completely forgot what I was doing. Spending two days with small children can do that to someone.

“What was that?” Grian demanded.

“Oh, that? That was simply conscious paper with a sword, fighting me,” X replied, smiling. “No, it’s conscious paper telling me that it’s my brother and wants me to let it be a part of the hermits.”

He was smiling, but Grian knew that he wasn’t happy. “Oh. That’s … normal.”

“Why was it attacking you then?” Scar asked.

“I said no,” X sighed. “Then it said that it would take violent measures. It did.”

“That’s a shame,” Grian remarked. “But we’re not here to talk about that. You need to see this.”

He brandished the piece of paper at X, who took it and peered at it. He read through the letter. “Where did you get this?”

“I was at my base and there was a lectern. I read the lectern. It exploded. This piece of paper was in the wreckage,” Grian answered shortly. X wondered why he seemed so angry and then remembered that he may or may have not yelled at Grian and threatened him at their last meeting.

“I see,” he said.

“What do we do?” Scar asked nervously.

X took a deep breath. He needed to keep calm, or at least appear to, so that the other two didn’t panic. He was intensely worried about what the letter meant on the inside, but Grian and Scar didn’t need to know that.

“We need to call a meeting, work out what to do next,” he answered confidently.

“Are you sure? Aren’t you very tired? You should get some rest,” Scar suggested.

“I’m fine,” X said, brushing him off. He knew that Scar was only trying to help, but he really wasn’t in the mood. “Let’s meet up with the others at the entrance to Vault 6.”

“Done,” said Scar, as he hit send on his communicator. Grian and X’s communicators beeped simultaneously.

<GoodTimeWithScar> MEET AT VAULT 6

<GoodTimeWithScar> EMERGENCY

“Bruh,” said Grian.

~~~

X read the contents of the sheet of paper aloud. The hermits around him all inhaled collectively.

“Holy crap,” Iskall breathed.

“What do we do?” Jevin asked.

X folded the paper carefully in half. “If it does come from the dead … versions … of ourselves, then we don’t know much about them. I found out about some stuff, but not much. If it doesn’t, then we’re screwed. I’d say to gather more information and then plan.”

“What did you find -” Ren began.

“What should we do about the hermits that have gone exploring somewhere? Like Wels and Python?” Jevin asked sharply. “If they’re attacked or something, they’ll be extremely vulnerable.”

“I’ve given them instructions in the case of an emergency. They will be fine,” X answered. “Plus, they can always come back.”

“What should we do about the Greyskins then, if they are indeed who sent this note?” Joe asked.

“We could kill them,” False suggested. “They might not be able to respawn.”

“Nope,” said X. “No killing.”

He had known that False would come up with that idea.

“Sounds like a great plan to me,” Iskall shrugged. “False and I can kill them off while you guys stay safe.”

“Absolutely not,” Stress shot down. “We don’ know the full story ye’, do we? Which means we can’t kill ‘em.”

“Oh please, you can’t believe that they’re redeemable,” Iskall sighed. “This isn’t a novel. They’ve been terrorizing us for months now, so they probably deserve death, or something even worse.”

“Like permanent deletion,” Doc suggested. “What Scar was threatened with when I was mind-controlled.”

“Seems sketchy,” Cleo muttered.

“I think that we should run far, far away,” Zedaph interrupted extravagantly. “Somewhere where they can’t find us.”

“That is a stupid idea,” False snapped. “We have everything with us, and all our bases here, on the main island. You just want that to go to waste?”

“I’m not leaving my base,” Mumbo added.

“We have emotional attachments to the projects we’ve been working on for so long,” False continued. “So, no. There are solutions, but running away isn’t one.”

“Besides, I can’t use an elytra,” TFC piped up. “So I have to walk there on foot, or use the nether, where they can track us if we build a nether tunnel.”

“Yeah, but -” Zed argued. The meeting dissolved into chaos as the hermits began to argue.

X tried to intervene, but his yelling barely made a dent in the noise.

The hermits only fell silent as a strong gust of wind blew their words away. X heard other noises instead. Noises that seemed to be coming from above.

He looked up to see beings - people - dead hermits - materializing out of the sky.

_Oh, crap._

He studied them closely. There seemed to be others there, as well, apart from the well-known Greyskins.

One of them looked like Evil Xisuma.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love cliffhangers. They're just the best, aren't they?
> 
> This is the last chapter in this work. I've planned this story to be a three-part work (some might call it a trilogy). This one is shorter than the original Not what it seems. I planned fourteen chapters, then skipped over a chapter number and merged two short ones together.
> 
> Sorry for the late update today, I was up at 3am this morning drinking water.
> 
> Imma go on a month-long hiatus now bye-
> 
> Seriously though, I'm going back to school in a week and it's going to be literal hell. Perhaps I will write a chapter every week or so. I'm not sure. Upon turning on my school laptop this morning, I was reminded uncomfortably that I have homework to do and I haven't done any of it yet.
> 
> Buh-bye!


	13. Update

Hi, it's me. I just wanted to put it out there that I've been on a very, very long break. I've started on other projects, which I might be posting soon. I've started on the third and final part of NWIT, but I've basically lost all inspiration. I'll come back to it someday, it just won't be soon. Sorry if you're disappointed!


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